


The Dying of the Light

by ShadowBlazer



Series: Sing for Absolution [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, F/F, Magical Realism, Mystery, POV Alternating, Sequel, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-02-09 02:31:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12878295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowBlazer/pseuds/ShadowBlazer
Summary: Lucina can't find where the Grimleal in the Emblem officers who arrive in her town are while Severa knows exactly where they are: right behind her as she flees farther away from Ylisse and home. They wonder when they will see each other again. Or if.





	1. Rage, Rage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Halifax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halifax/gifts).



> Hey all, thank you so much for your patience with me if you're still with this story. I do apologize for the lateness as November has been a hectic month for me, but it's up and posted. In any case, I hope you enjoy the story and would like to hear your thoughts and comments as well. Have a great read.

Severa is silent as she sits beside Lon'qu on a high ridge, watching a pack of wolves chase down a flagging moose in the snow.

The moose stumbles to its knees, panting, whorls of its breath streaming from its nostrils in great plumes. The wolves yip and latch onto its belly, its thighs - a single grey wolf with a muzzle covered in blood runs from behind the moose, dragging a line of red intestine.

Severa keeps her eyes on the scene. She addresses the man beside her. "Why are you showing me this?"

Lon'qu stands off, snow falling from his coat. "Do you think you can save that moose, Severa?"

Severa shakes her head. The moose's blood stains the snow beneath it in huge swarths of pink as the wolves tear in greedy huddles at its underbelly. "It might as well already be dead." She lifts her gun, her only momento from her mother. "I could put it out of its misery though."

"Or you could miss and waste a bullet that could save your life in the future." Lon'qu stares into the horizon, gaze faraway. "You can't save everyone, Severa." He glances sharply at her.

Severa bristles. "What?"

He stares between her and the gun before shaking his head. "Nothing. Come. We have miles to go."

After leaving Ylisse, they ditch Cordelia’s bright blue Jeep as quickly as possible, and make their way to Chon’sin under Lon'qu's recommendation, changing their method of travelling so rapidly Severa comes to expect to ride in a wagon one day and making a trek on horseback the next. He insists on heading into the mountains in the far north where blizzards rage at will and no one from Grimleal searches for them, though Lon'qu was certain that they would when they travelled east at first.

After observing the way Lon’qu leads them on at a hard, rapid pace with little time to rest, Severa concludes that he is crazy. What sort of adult forces a teenaged girl to hike days at a time with only three hours of sleep? Or train said girl in hand-to-hand combat and weapons even when she’s sleeping on her feet? If Cordelia was strict with the execution of Severa’s attack, then Lon’qu is insane. He once berated her for being half a second off in a counter-attack, eliciting bickering that sent them into a furious silence for the next two days. But he’s cautious, shrewd. He leads them down trails and paths that Severa would have doubted they were there had he not guided them through them himself, and Lon’qu has taught her how to make traps to hunt and find food in the dead of winter. The rumours she hears about Ylisse and herself in the towns they visit makes her pause at every conversation where her hometown is mention. She never hears anything about her family or Lucina.

Several times, Lon'qu leaves her to make her way to their next meeting point while he deals with what he claims are unwanted elements. Severa just swears at his random disappearances and focuses on making her way there. After showing her the dying moose, Lon’qu sends her riding alone to their next checkpoint—a small village at the foot of a crest of mountains—while he slips away to find a weapon he buried ages ago. How he manage to procure a small, shaggy pony for her to ride from nowhere flabbergasts her. Severa has no idea what’s so important about a single knife, but Lon’qu thought it critical enough to leave her travelling by herself after ample, repetitive warnings about how to stay away from danger. Severa wonders why did she even leave her mother when Cordelia came back in the form of Lon'qu.

At the village's entrance of their meeting place, Severa gets off of a braying pony that tried to knock her from her seat by running under a low-hanging branch. Their mutual dislike is apparent from the start when Severa spends the entire ride with her heels in its sides. After she fully dismounts off of the snorting mare, she slaps its hind quarters and ducks a quick kick in retaliation.

A man nearby eyes her with some approval. He stands in front of a stable filled with thick-furred horses. “You're fast. A hunter?” 

Severa shakes her head and pulls up the white fabric of her scarf. She hold out the reins to him. "How much for her?"

The man quickly assesses her mount, his thick moustache quivering. He names a number that Severa haggles over a bit before she accepts the coins he drops into her hand. She leaves as the man admires his new purchase, and makes her way down a road lined with wooden buildings with snow on their thatched roofs. She spots the dark building Lon'qu instructed to look for at the end of her path, and quickens her stride, passing by an open field where a crowd gathers around a small casket. Severa sneaks by, her scarf wrapped around her face. A few people stare at her left eyebrow where the hair is bisected by a thin scar, and she ducks her head, hurrying forth until she arrives at a building of black wood with the words "World's End" painted in gold across its porch.

She stamps her feet at the inn’s doorstep to knock the snow off of her boots before pushing open the worn door and getting hit with the smell of something that makes her stomach gurgle. The inn has a single large room that doubles as its dining hall, faded blue walls and brown doors at the far side suggesting a line of rooms ready for use. The innkeeper glances up, a pretty young girl with dark eyes who stops her sweeping and moves to greet her. Severa shakes her head and slips past towards the far end of the room where Lon’qu sits close to the fire with twin bowls of stew at his table. There are no windows behind him.

Severa sits down and pulls off her heavy gloves before reaching for a bowl. The smooth wooden surface beneath her fingertips is warm, welcoming. Unlike the man across from her. “You just got here.”

Lon’qu doesn’t look up from his meal. “Some choose to greet people first when they meet them again, Severa.”

She scoffs, “Like you care.” She lifts a scoop of the stew into her mouth and finds herself devouring the rest of it quickly. 

Lon’qu eyes her and waves for the innkeeper to bring them another serving. “You haven’t eaten.”

“No time. I rode all night, because I didn't know if I was being followed.” There is a good reason why her mount dislikes her. “Did you get what you were looking for?”

Lon’qu nods slightly and shifts his jacket sleeve, so Severa can catch a flash of something glinting in it. “A worthwhile detour.”

Severa snorts. “It better be.” She isn’t going to ride any more irate ponies through the snow. “What’s so great about it?”

“It’s one I left behind once upon a time.” Lon’qu listens and peers around them.

A couple of women wearing aprons huddle at what looks like the hallway to the kitchen. They stare at the pair at the table and whisper a word that Severa strains to hear. 

She asks, “What are they saying?”

Lon’qu glances at her. “Fao’lan. They are naming you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s an honour they’re giving you.” Lon’qu turns away and tilts his head towards the windows across from him. “We need to head east before a storm blows in.” 

A steaming bowl comes down between them, and the pair glances up. The innkeeper blushes under their gaze. “Another order of our homemade stew as you requested.” She lets go and fidgets, leaving Severa wondering what she wants. After a few moments, the girl addresses her. “It’s rare that we get travellers out here like you. Are you journeying to meet a friend or...” She hesitates. “...a lover?”

Severa bristles. Lon’qu cuts her off before she can answer. “I am showing her around Chon’sin. I’ve been away for many years.”

The girl nods, eyes still on Severa. “You will have a long adventure then. Unlike Ylisse or Valm, Chon’sin isn’t a single city but a collection of small villages connected together by their region.” She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and glances at Severa’s eyebrow. “You look like someone who can handle herself.”

When Severa doesn’t answer, the innkeeper apologizes for the interruption and quickly retreats to the safety of her counter. She looks back at them, and her flush deepens.

Severa scoffs, “Looks like you have an admirer.”

Lon’qu shakes his head. “You need to improve your situational awareness. She’s been looking at you the entire time.”

She glances at the innkeeper again who flushes before glancing away. “Wait. Why?” Severa is taken. Or she used to be. “I have a scar on my face. How is that attractive?”

Lon’qu shrugs. “It shows that you survived a fight and can handle yourself.” He lowers his voice. “And it shows that you can be dangerous.”

The doorbell jangles, and two well-dressed men in thick, dark coats enter. They gesture to the innkeeper and make their way to sit at a table behind Severa. 

Lon’qu tenses when they seat themselves. He leans in. “Finish your meal quickly, so we can go.”

Severa stiffens at his tone, but knows that whatever has Lon’qu wary must be serious. She drains the rest of her meal, and the pair make their way to the entrance where Lon’qu pays the surprised innkeeper a rather generous amount of money. They almost make it out the door when a carefully enunciated voice calls out.

“Excuse me, but are you two from Ylisse?”

Lon’qu curses under his breath. He and Severa turn around.

The two polished men smile at Severa. The smaller one flicks his dark eyes over her, a tan like he’s lived in a desert all of his life bright against the black of his coat. His grin spreads until the corners seem to be touching his ears, and something glitters in his eyes. Severa’s instinct tells her to bolt. “You look like you’re from there. We’ve visited recently. Very tragic what happened to it with the Emblem’s arrival." He leans in. "Would you like to join us for lunch, and we can share what we learned?”

“No.” Lon’qu keeps his eyes on them. “We need to get going.”

The taller man lifts his fine brows. “Really? What’s the hurry? Surely, you and your daughter can stay for a bit.”

Lon’qu and Severa glance at each other. There’s a long pause. 

Lon’qu clears his throat. “Yes, my...daughter and I need to go.”

It’s unconvincing to Severa’s ears. The two men only smile wider.

Lon’qu ushers her away and out the door. “We should go.” He pitches his voice low. “Don’t react to anything they say.”

He gets her partway down the road when one of the men calls out to them. “But don’t you want to hear about what happened to the sheriff and his family? His daughter?” 

Severa jerks, and Lon’qu growls, shoving her forward, “We’re not interested.”

“Or even about what they did to the Assistant Sheriff, whom the Emblem decided was the instigator of it all?”

This time, Severa looks back.

The men grin widely, but there’s no warmth in their eyes. They look at her like hungry hunters who caught a rabbit in their trap. 

Lon’qu grabs her arm and drags her forward. “We need to go!” he snarls in her ear as he charges forward and hauls them both out of the village, down the snow-covered path, and towards the mountains. He glances over his shoulder all the while.

When they’re out of sight, Severa yanks her arm back, heaving. “What happened to my mother?” Or her father? Lucina? “What did the Emblem do to them?”

Lon’qu almost glowers before looking away towards the mountains. “This won’t help you right now.”

“Tell me!” Severa’s voice rings out shrill, high. Scared. “I have a right to know!”

Lon’qu winces and closes his eyes, taking a slow breath. “Ylisse is on lockdown and investigation, as the Emblem is investing the deaths of several officers and many people within its jurisdiction.” He shakes his head. “Perhaps, we should not have left Tharja to her devices when rescuing Noire.”

Severa’s nape prickles. “What does that have to do with my mother?”

“Cordelia is unharmed, but she’s...” Lon’qu hesitates. “She’s not in a good spot.”

“What does that mean?”

Lon’qu swivels around. “It means we’ve wasted enough time. We need to move. There’s something wrong about those men.”

“Hey! This is my mother you’re hiding information about!”

Lon’qu snarls, “She's safe, but we won’t be if you hold us back so the people looking for you can catch up!” He stalks forward without looking back.

Severa takes several long, deep breaths before unclenching her hands and stepping forward. She follows Lon’qu into the woods as snow drifts down, wiping out their tracks as if they had never passed by.

They carry on for a few hours with the sun overhead when Lon’qu brings them the edge of a village with blackened, gutted buildings and debris littering the snow-dusted roads. The silence is staggering, and it’s clear that the village has been dead for a long time.

Lon’qu creeps around the buildings, waiting and peering around every so often, hand waiting on the knife he's moved onto his belt. Severa follows, back flat against the wall of a broken home, so no one can ambush her from behind. Her eyes catch on the faded colours of discarded toys frozen and half sticking out of the snow. She stares at the bent frame of a blue bicycle that reminds her too much of the hunk of scrap Lucina used to ride. “What happened here?”

Lon’qu doesn’t turn his gaze away from ahead. “This used to be the home of a few hundred people before the Grimleal came.” He peers around the corner of a home and doesn’t seem to find what he’s scanning for. He relaxes and straightens up, hand still on his blade. “This part of Chon’sin was where the Grimleal begin their war. When they started, they took everyone, not just the children.”

He crosses into the village square with a lazy ease, as if he’s traced this path many times in the past. Severa trails behind him, gazing at the smashed windows and broken doors, the spray of bullet holes across the frames. “How do you know where to go here?”

Lon’qu glances at her. “I used to live here before the war came.”

“Wait,” Severa’s throat closes, “this used to be your home?”

Lon’qu doesn’t answer.

Severa watches the world pass by in the burnt and bloodstained crosses of the church in the abandoned village. She points at a torn painting of Naga in one deserted house that Lon’qu enters, the walls stained in a faded brown spray. “Why didn’t Naga help these people?”

Lon’qu glances back over his shoulder, pausing in his search through a drawer. “Why do you think?”

Severa recalls her father’s teachings. “Naga cannot help those who don’t help themselves.” She feels uneasy, looking at the smashed table that looked like two people fell on it. “But these people clearly tried to.”

Lon’qu shrugs and goes back to searching. Theology is not his strong point.

Severa stares out into the grey skies through the shattered glass of a broken window. No one has never seen Naga in person, though many have claimed to see the shadows of Grima in the dark and in their dreams. She wonders why. 

She sweeps past the window to a mirror surprisingly intact above a dresser and peers at her reflection. The silver surface is dirty, dusty. Severa pulls back her hood, revealing a guarded expression and tired-looking eyes. She runs her fingers down her left eyebrow where a line cuts it neatly in half. Nothing grows back there anymore. She glances to her side and sees a copy of her face between her reflection, five shades paler as if that Severa is being laid in a casket. 

Severa jumps back. She blinks and the copy is gone, but the feeling like she walked over her own grave lingers. She whirls around and yells at Lon’qu who had disappeared into one of the rooms. “What are we doing here anyway? Was this your house?”

“No.” Lon’qu emerges from a darkened doorway, a silver necklace with a glittering green stone in his hand. “This used to belong to—“ 

He cocks his head as if hearing something. He bares his teeth. “Severa, hide!”

“Wha—“ 

Lon’qu lunges her and shuts her into a nearby closet, and Severa stumble back into clothes that smell of dust and something stale. She snarls when Lon’qu closes the door. But when she looks through the stained wooden slates, something about his movements halts her, the tension in his gait like an animal freezing under the gaze of prey. 

Two shadows fall across the threshold to the entrance, and the slow footfalls of boots on wooden floors echo like grim drumbeats in the empty house.

The two men from the previous village tip their hats to Lon’qu, snow spilling from the dark material. The taller man with the trim sideburns says, “You’re a hard man to catch, Mr. Jin. Though, I’d thought you would be harder.”

The shorter man grins, his eye teeth glinting in the silver of the sunlight. “Gules’ dog, aren’t you?”

Lon’qu eyes flicker. “It’s Gules’ wolf.” The men step forward and Lon’qu’s already across the room, slicing through the fabric of the the taller man’s coat as he shouts and raises his arm to protect his face. The shorter one lunges as Lon’qu spins and kicks him in the ribs, dropping the man to the floor with an awful cracking sound. 

Lon’qu whips around and carves deeply into the other man’s wrist, a silver gun falling from a gloved hand. The man stumbles backwards across the room, and Lon’qu follows, snarling. “I earned it.”

Severa spots the shorter man crawling forward until he struggles to his knees, reaching into his coat until he's pulling out something that glints of steel. She kicks open the door and rushes toward him, startling the man as Severa snaps her mother’s gun to his face. He stares at the metal barrel, and she at him. Fear flickers across his face as he lunges toward her, but Severa’s already pulling the trigger.

The gunshot sounds strange, almost muffled. She turns to Lon’qu, hearing something heavy drop to the floor and refusing to look at the remainder of the man’s head. Lon’qu glares at his opponent, staggered on the wall across from him and holding a hand to his side. The man slides down to a sitting position while something dark blossoms across the fabric of his coat, and Lon’qu flicks off beads of red on his knife. The man peels back his coat, revealing the mark of Grima on his collarbone. He peers down and inhales sharply, palm pressed to his ribs as he slumps against the wall. The stain on his coat spreads across the cloth at an alarming rate. Lon’qu is very efficient at what he does.

Lon’qu’s tone is flat. “Your god didn’t consider you worth saving.”

The man smiles. “At least, my god is here with me. Where is yours?”

Severa retorts, “Everywhere. And she’s way more dependable than someone who left you to die.”

The man snarls, lips stained with his own blood, “Naga is dead! Grima killed her at the start of this world, and you all worship a god who already died!”

Severa doesn’t think. She kicks him, and he cries out, falling over. “You’re wrong!” The uneasiness spreads in her stomach like a web, spiking into a panic. “Naga is alive, and she’ll destroy your god anytime!”

The man sneers. He lies on the ground, eyes fluttering shut. “Then, where is she?”

Severa reels, feeling his words strike against her heart, cracking her faith. “She’s here, and she helped us kick your ass!”

Lon’qu shakes his head. “Severa, stop.” He points at the man on the ground.

Severa stares for a long moment before turning away. There's no point in continuing.

Lon’qu steps past the cooling body. “We should get out of there before more arrive.”

Severa nods dumbly, eyes stuck on the man who died with a smile on his face. Even in death, he looks smug. She follows Lon’qu, her throat burning. “Yeah, there’s nothing here anymore.”

They slip from the village to the surrounding hills in time to see a dark vehicle arrive, men with semi-automatic guns slipping out from the doors and running into the village. Severa’s glad that she and Lon’qu left when they did.

They pass through the surrounding forest where the trees cling together so tightly no vehicle can pass through. Lon’qu doesn’t allow them to stop for rest for two days, and Severa manages to keep up behind him. On the third day when Severa collapses into the snow, Lon’qu retraces his steps and peers over her.

He scowls and looks around. “We can rest for one hour. Then, we need to go.”

Severa doesn’t hear him. She’s already out.

She wakes up to being shaken roughly, Lon’qu’s voice a growl in her ear. “Get up. We have to go.”

Severa’s not sure why. The cold doesn’t bother her. She hardly feels it in her fingers anymore.

“Get up. Don’t you want to return to Ylisse one day?”

At his words, Severa stirs as thoughts of sitting close to her mother and father one day again comes to mind, of Noire’s gentle smile, and of Lucina’s steady gaze—unflinching in its fixation on Severa. She does want to go back. She wants to go back home.

At length, Severa pushes against the earth, and it feels like the ground is shoving back. She stumbles to her feet like a weight is hanging from her neck, and struggles through the snow towards Lon’qu before falling to her knees in front of him. She heaves before glancing up and being stunned by something like pride on his face before he strides away.

Lon’qu gestures for her to follow. “We can rest when we’re dead.”

Reassuring.

Severa leans back and stares up into the sky, wondering if death would at least be a brief respite from Lon’qu. She takes a deep breath and stumbles to her feet.

Lon’qu leads the way, and Severa follows. It only occurs to her hours later that she’s taken another life. 

She begins to worry when she realizes she doesn’t care.

—

They stop by a cave when a blizzard blows up in the night. Lon’qu creates a fire just far in enough that the wind doesn’t smother it.

Severa stares at the snapping flames with her mother’s gun heavy in her hands. 

Lon’qu observes her for a few minutes before handing her a bundle of twigs. “Feed that to the fire.”

Severa takes the bunch and toss a couple of sticks into the flames. They sputter. “They don’t make a difference.”

“Are you talking about yourself or them?” He shrugs when she glares at him. “You’re an easy read. You remind me of myself when I was younger.”

“You don’t know me!” Severa throws her hands up. “I barely even know you!”

Lon’qu shrugs. “Consider yourself lucky you don’t.” He leans against the cave wall and crosses his arms. “So, why are you miserable?”

Severa stares ahead before she picks up a twig. She pokes at the dwindling fire with it, frozen and bare in her hands. She can't really tell him. “I saw myself at the village back there. Or someone who looks like me.”

Lon’qu tenses. “What?”

“In the mirror. I saw myself but much paler.” Severa glances up. “What was that?”

Lon’qu looks out into the swirling snow ahead of them. “A doppelgänger.” He stiffens. “There was a reason why this part of Chon’sin was attacked first in the Grimleal’s campaign. It has one of the thinnest barriers between this world and the Old World including Plegia, and it has more sightings of apparitions than anywhere else. The people of Chon’sin are highly spiritual, believing in things like an afterlife, doppelgängers, and Einherjars.”

“Einherjars?” Severa frowns. “Aren’t those the souls of slain warriors?” She recalls her father’s teachings, his touch light on her shoulder as he guides his finger along the passage of his holy book. Her throat tightens, and her eyes burns at the thought of him. “It is a popular theological belief that the Twelve Crusaders were Einherjars.”

“No.” Lon’qu shakes his head. “Einherjars are just copies, body-stealers. They may believe and act as if they are like those warriors, but they are not.” He stares into the fire. “Nothing brings back the dead.”

After a long silence that Severa finds too awkward, Lon’qu sighs and pulls the green necklace he took out of his pocket. Severa snorts at the sight. If she knew they were going to kill two men to loot one house, she might have reconsidered getting off of that pony in the morning. “What is that?”

“A jade necklace.” Lon’qu is silent. “It belonged to someone dear to me.”

“Like who?” His grandmother?

Lon’qu stares at the fire. “My fiancée. She survived the attack on our village when we escaped. But not the war.”

Severa doesn’t know how to reply . It’s not exactly as if she can say, ‘Sorry for traipsing through your dead fiancée’s house.’ 

She clears her throat. “How did she die?”

Lon’qu pauses. “You can ask your mother when you see her again.”

“When?” Severa grinds her teeth together, feeling wetness in her eyes. “You think that’s going to happen?”

Lon’qu gives her a strange look. “Of course. I’ll make sure you’ll survive to do so.”

Severa scoffs, "Like you care about what happens to me."

Lon'qu turns his head slightly. "It doesn't matter if I do when you don't care about what happens to you."

Severa doesn’t answer. She turns her head in the direction of Ylisse and something tightens in her chest.

Lon’qu catches her gaze and shake his head. “Don’t look back, Severa. It’s a waste of your time.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Like she didn’t already know that.

Lon’qu looks at her like she’s a particularly dense pupil before getting up. “I’m going to sleep. Put out the fire before you go to bed, so the light won’t give away our position.”

“Not afraid of us freezing to death?” Severa gripes.

He heads to the back of the cave. “There are worse ones to fear.” Lon’qu turns back to look at her. “The villagers from the morning were honouring you when they named you. Fao’lan means ‘little wolf’.”

Severa tastes something bitter in her mouth and stares at her near-frozen hands. Little wolf, indeed.

Lon’qu stares at her as if wanting to say more. When Severa doesn’t yield, he turns and disappears into the dark of the cave.

Severa stares into the sputtering fire in the bitter cold of the night, wondering where Naga was and how she could let so much harm befall the people who believed in her. If she even cared. If she was even there. If she knew Severa was asking why she was so silent.

Severa sits until the fire dwindles into weak flames. She gets up and snuffs out the light.


	2. Do Not Go Gentle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severa and Lon'qu train in an isolated cabin in Chon'sin's mountains, but Severa begins to wonders what is the point of it all. Lon'qu shows her when he takes her to the Mila tree and forces her to make a choice.

When Severa wakes in the mornings of winter and peers out into the whiteness, snowflakes dusting her long lashes, she thinks of how far away home is and how it feels like Lucina sleeps in her blood.

After crossing through the abandoned village, Severa and Lon'qu hike high into the mountains. The sun nearly blinds them with how it bounces off the snow. Lon'qu drives them forward, and Severa follows as he urges them to run through a forest until they spot a lonely dark cabin sunk into the side of a mountain near the top. Upon spotting it, Lon’qu wades though the snow toward it while Severa nearly swims through the hip-high coldness. He examines the doorframe when he arrives before reaching into a pouch around his neck and pulling out a golden key. He gestures for her to wait as he slips inside, and Severa huffs, shivering as she yanks her scarf up over her face. When at last, Lon'qu reappears, he waves for her to come in, and Severa nearly bowls him over when she rushes in.

The entrance opens into a room with a bed topped with fur blankets near the fireplace. A tiny dining table sits opposite the bed that Severa eyes while an open doorway beside it leads into the kitchen, and a hallway with a bathroom and another bedroom. Lon'qu closes the door, and crosses the room to start the fire. Severa glances around, examining the dusty furniture and a brick stove with an iron flattop. “So, what are we doing here?”

Lon'qu blows into his hands as the fire starts. “We're going to train, since no Grimleal will be able to follow us here. We'll take time to get used to the place first.”

After a couple of days, Severa wakes in amazement every morning that she hasn’t frozen to death overnight. When she has adjusted enough to the cold mornings that she takes to tending the fire, Lon’qu fetches a set of wooden swords out from a closet near the back of the cabin. When asked about where they came from, he replies, “My mentor left these when he and I used to train here.”

“Your mentor?”

“Yes.” Lon’qu tosses a sword to Severa and slips on his thick boots. “The man who would become Gules.” 

He leaves before she can ask him more, and Severa fumes. Lon’qu only shares about the inner Emblem at random times, and never when she presses him about it. What stupid secrets is he afraid she’ll leak if he actually tells her what the heck they're doing?

Severa huffs, grabs the sword, and follows after Lon’qu, who is already standing in an area cleared of snow. There is a training dummy made of wood by the cabin, its surface frosted. “So, we’re going to hit that?”

“No, I’m going to teach you how to stand with your weapon and how to hold it.”

Severa scowls, “It’s a wooden stick. I think I’ve mastered the basics of how to hold it, thank you.”

Lon’qu shakes his head. “What happens when you swing it at something, and it bounces off? Is a weak grip going to hold?” When Severa doesn’t answer, he continues. “Many an idiot have ended their own life by not thinking about their sword when they use it. Swords can bounce back into the owner’s face. Or you can over-swing them and slice into your leg. You need to think about what you’re doing, otherwise you’re more of a danger to yourself than anyone else.”

“Why am I learning how to use a sword? In case you forgot, people like to use bullets nowadays.”

Lon’qu turns to face the dummy, hiding his face. “Not always.”

He ends up going through a couple of stances and grips with her, forcing her through several conditioning exercises that he mentioned his mentor had made him do to make his strikes stronger. At the end of the day after evaluating the training Lon’qu has put her through, Severa concludes that Lon’qu’s mentor is probably as nutty as he is.

It gets even worse when he wakes her up everyday for the next few weeks to start their training with a run in the snow. Lon’qu jogs beside her, dressed in a thin shirt as snow splashes onto his reddened face while he barks at her, and the only thought driving Severa forward is that she would greatly like to kill him one day. 

He’s relentless and hardly gives her ten minutes to rest at a time when he’s in her face again, demanding more effort and spewing out unwanted criticisms that has Severa swinging harder and faster at him. Her appetite spikes. Severa find herself constantly eating in a way that would put a tableful of teenaged boys to shame. She doesn’t know where Lon’qu gets the food, just that he disappears for a couple of hours every morning before reappearing with a canvas bag of meat, bread, and vegetables slung over his back.

As horrible as the training is during the day, the nights are worse when Lon’qu leaves her to patrol the area, and Severa is trapped inside the cabin with her thoughts.

Lon’qu tells her that no Grimleal would dare cross the woods they took to get to their location. When pressed why, he says that the forest reflects its visitors’ greatest regrets since Chon’sin is the land of apparitions, and damn this stupid, haunted land! Severa is sick of all the stupid ghosts and demons she’s run into, and how they seem to delve into her. The forest around her makes her thinks about the regrets she carries around like a long, heavy cape choking her, and she doesn’t even know which is her biggest one.

Was it leaving Owain alone on the last day Severa saw him alive? Or was the reddened brand in the shape of an eye on Noire’s hand, knowing that she will never have another day of peace from the Grimleal’s hunts? It might be leaving her mother defenceless in the Emblem’s harsh judgment for defending her daughter’s actions, knowing that Cordelia is on trial because of her. Or maybe it was not looking back once she and Lon’qu hit Lovers’ break when they left Ylisse, because she knew she was breaking Lucina’s heart with every second she watched them go. Or was it in Noire’s house when she slammed the dented kettle into De Rais’ face, shattering teeth and bone, and understanding that she felt nothing over her actions because she thought he deserved it, and felt more guilty over that than knowing she killed someone?

Maybe it’s the thought that, at her core, Severa is a coward, and every night, she turns from the windows and covers herself with a blanket besides a whispering fire. She closes her eyes and pretends the forest isn’t there while her regrets eat at her heart, and she wonders if the world would be better off without her.

One morning, the cabin door opens and Severa hears Lon’qu slip in, grunting as firewood clatters onto the floor. His footsteps grow louder as he approaches the bed. “Severa, get up.”

When Severa doesn’t move, Lon’qu lays the back of his hand lightly on her forehead. Her curses and withdraws. Moments later, she hears the hiss of a fire sputtering to life, a slow warmth pervading the room. At length, Severa stirs, turning over as she opens her eyes to the sight of Lon’qu carrying a steaming bowl towards her. 

He sets the bowl of something creamy with floating chunks of wild mushroom beside her. He waits for Severa to reach for it and when she doesn’t, he grabs the spoon and begins to feed her. Like a child.

Severa turns away. She croaks, “I can do that myself.”

“Then, do it.” Lon’qu stands up, his expression unreadable. “Were you going to wait until you froze to death to do something?” He crosses his arms and scowls, expression flickering. “You always keep the fire going.”

Severa curls up with the blankets around her, pulling the bowl into her lap. “I’m sick.”

Lon’qu frowns. “You don’t get sick.”

Severa scoffs, “What? You’re going to tell how I feel now?”

He shakes his head. “No, you just don’t.”

“And how would you know?”

Something flickers in Lon’qu’s eyes before he shrugs. “When was the last time you were?”

Severa opens her mouth before closing it. “Whatever. I must have been really little.”

Lon’qu doesn’t look he believes her. “Eat your soup.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” There’s no bite to Severa’s words as she lifts the spoon morosely to her mouth. Lon’qu cooks like he has never heard the word 'salt.' “What are we going to do today?” Carry a pack filled with rocks up a mountain? Run naked through the freezing snow?

Lon’qu peers out the window before glancing at her. “We’re going to leave.”

Severa puts down her spoon. “And go where?” 

“Somewhere else to train you.” Lon’qu frowns as he studies something out the window. He mutters something like, “Fog’s coming in.”

A few hours later, Lon’qu takes her out of the cabin and down the mountainous path. Severa doesn’t look at the woods as they pass until they reach a rocky road that winds around. She blinks when they spot the gentle curl of smoke in the distance and heads towards it, a fog gathering in the low grounds of the valley.

She asks, “What is that?”

“A village known for its hospitality towards travellers. It’s on our route.” Lon’qu scans the horizon around them before signalling her forward. “They have a winter solstice festival happening today that we can take part in.”

“Why?”

Lon’qu doesn’t answer for several minutes before he stiffly replies. “I thought you might like it.”

Severa starts. She stares at Lon’qu who strides ahead, hood over his head. They don’t talk again until they reach the village. 

The entrance is wreathed in a wide wooden archway with vines dusted with ice. A stone pathway leads down a hill and into a village square where several dozen people gather around stalls and booths, laughing and chattering to their neighbours. The smell of roast meat and fresh bread hits Severa like a hammer on an anvil, and her stomach clenches. Lon’qu slips her some coins, and she grabs a thick, barley soup for both of them to eat at a bench near the centre. 

Severa finishes first, sighing and dropping her spoon back into the bowl. She gazes around the area. Children squawk and squall as they play around the stone fountain, the tallest of the toddlers coming up halfway up Severa’s thigh. Stalls draped with ribbons and banners surround them, and Severa’s nose wrinkles at the scent of the sheep and horses on display nearby.

She asks, “Why are they celebrating?”

Lon’qu leans forward, taking the bowl from her. He gestures at the fog in the distance that’s creeping closer. “The solstice is when the divide between the Old World and this one is the weakest, and creatures from either may cross over into each other. The fog is where the barrier is breaking, and travellers are advised not to go into it in case they encounter something from the Old World. The celebration is to keep a torch lit for wanderers stuck in the fog to guide them back, so they can return home.” He straightens up. “Or so the myth goes.”

“Wait, if the barrier is the thinnest right now, wouldn’t Grima be able to cross?” Severa pauses, remembering her theology. “Or is it because he's sealed away that he can't?”

“The latter. Grima cannot enter this world in his entirety without breaking the seal on him, though he has tried. And even then, he wouldn't be able to use the barriers to cross, since they are too small for him.” At Severa's puzzled look, he gestures towards a fisherman's net hanging from a stall. “Like this. The holes are small enough to let smaller creatures pass by, but larger things would get caught in them, unable to go through without tearing at what's holding them back. 

“Anyways,” he stands up, holding the bowls, “I’ll return these. Go enjoy yourself.” Lon’qu goes back to one of the food stalls and drops off the dishes before talking with a stable owner who's showing off several of his prized mounts, horses with solid chests and arrogant tosses of their heads.

Severa watches the villagers celebrate and feels like she doesn’t belong.

A voice from her left catches her attention. “Do you want me to read your fortune?”

Severa turns to see an elderly woman with fluffy white hair smiling at her, sitting behind a bare table with a single white cloth on it. The woman has crinkles around her eyes and deep lines around her mouth that reveals a life of much laughter. “I’m watching my grandchildren nearby, and thought I would do my bit for the festival.”

Severa turns her head to see a pack of blonde children squealing as they tackle each other by the fountain. “Those ones yours?” She shifts. “Are their parents busy doing something at the festival?”

“No.” The woman shakes her head. “Their mother died last year.”

Oh.

Good to know that Severa’s still the skilled conversationalist she always was.

Severa clears her throat. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Not your fault. There was lead in her leg after she got shot at as a young girl when the people from Plegia came years ago, and it finally got her.” The fortuneteller is no longer smiling. “Her husband died shortly before she did. Same reason.”

The elderly woman stares at the table as if trying to find answers in the velvet cloth. She shakes her head. “It’s in the past. The little ones have me now.” She picks up a pack of purple-backed cards. “Anyway, these have been painted with the creatures seen in the mist throughout the ages. I can reveal your fortune with these.” She smiles, a tooth missing at the front. “Or at least show some beautiful drawings to you.”

Severa scoffs and crosses her arms. She can’t exactly say no after that conversation. “Cards that tell your future?”

The woman shuffles the cards calmly. “Nothing tells your future. All they do is help your mind focus and reveal what it already knows.”

Well, that sounds less...dubious. “All right, fine. Go ahead.” What has Severa got to lose?

The elderly woman with the sweet smile flips over the cards for her. The first is of a tower being destroyed by lighting with people falling headfirst from it. On another is a picture of a man hanging from a cross by his foot with a solemn expression. 

She peers over the cards. “Oh, the Hanged Man. How interesting.” She turns over another one, and it shows a knight in black armour riding a white horse, a black and white flag in one hand and a white rose in the other. The woman’s eyebrows raise. She taps on the knight. “This is a rare and unwanted sighting around here. You have an unusual message.” 

Severa leans over the cards. “What does it all mean?”

Lon’qu barks behind her. “We need to go.”

“I’m busy.” Severa scowls when she feels him standing behind her.

Lon’qu growls, “Severa. The Grimleal are coming. Someone in the village spotted a group of hooded people making their way here.”

Severa’s nape tingles. She understands what he means. 

She draws close to the curious woman, voice low. “Get your grandchildren and go home. Lock the doors and keep a weapon on you at all times. Something bad is coming.”

The older woman nods and packs her cards into an faded purple bag. She gathers her three grandchildren playing near the fountain and ushers them down an old stone path, meeting Severa’s eyes once more before they cross the bridge into the heart of the village.

Severa stares after them. “What’s going to happen to this village after we leave? When the Grimleal come?”

Lon’qu doesn’t answer. Severa thinks about the fortune teller’s story. She wonders what else the Grimleal will do to her family. She wonders if she needs another regret added to her list, if those small children need to lose another parental figure today.

She asks Lon’qu, quietly. “They’re looking for us, aren’t they? Why does the villagers have to pay?”

“We need to prioritize our survival first.”

“Over others’? You really are going to tell me that Grimleal are going to leave the people here all alone after they find out we were here?”

Lon’qu is silent. “You need to trust in Naga.”

Severa goes quiet and drops her gaze. After going through Lon'qu's village, she's not sure if that is a wise decison. “I don’t even know if she will do anything, or if she even cares. But if Naga won’t, then at least I will.” She whips past Lon’qu and leaps onto a nearby horse, the stallion rearing up in surprise as Severa digs her heels into its sides. She turns the horse, and it bolts towards the village entrance while the shouts of Lon’qu and its owner fade away. Severa pulls out her mother’s gun and quickly counts how many bullets she has. She's going to make them count.

The horse darts from the village entrance, the grasp of the morning fog gathered low at its hooves and legs. As Severa rides, the fog thickens until she can only barely see the road in front of her. Her tenacity pays off when she spots a crowd of people in black cloaks and hoods who turn at the sound of her galloping horse. One of the crowd pulls out a gun and fires past her, startling her mount who nearly dives to the side. 

Her breath catching, Severa lifts her gun and aims, feeling like everything is slowing for her, even the horse skidding along the dirt path. The people lift their guns but languidly as if through honey. Severa fires multiple time into the crowd. The screams take time to come, sheer silence for a long moment with her horse still sliding down the path before it catches its balance and rights itself. When it does, the first of the shrieks ring out as some of the figures double over, folding onto on themselves as Severa turns her stallion around and rides it down a path away from the village, firing behind her.

The mob storms after her.

Severa faces the front again, everything speeding up again as the horse bolts between the mountains, and she feels exhausted as if weights are stacked on her arms. The fog obscures her vision, a wall of white as the stallion blurs down a dirt path that Severa knows she will break something upon if she gets thrown off. 

Eventually, the horse slows, halting altogether. Severa peers around its massive neck, but sees nothing but the horse’s eyes bulging from its face, rolling away as if having a seizure. It tenses below her, and Severa jumps off before it rears upwards, hooves sprawling as it screams. The horse descends and tears away, darting in a direction away from in front of her. 

Severa wonders what’s got it so terrified when she hears the slow clomping of something massive approaching. She squints at the sound until she sees a figure emerge from the fog, sheathed in black and silver armour with a black flag in one hand and a white rose in the other. She feels the hair all over her body rise. 

The horse alone is massive, its shoulders standing taller than her, and the clanking of the armoured man is disconcerting as if there is nothing inside but hard surfaces banging against the metal. The edges where the joints meet are rusted, as if the armour hasn’t been washed in ages and there are dark stains along it that makes Severa’s nape prickle. 

She dives into the nearby bushes, dignity be damned. She was not going to be seen by whatever this thing happens to be. 

Severa holds her breath as the figure clinks by. It stops in front of her, and Severa tenses as she peer through the branches, the knight turning its helmet and lifting up its visor slightly. Severa jams her hand into her mouth to stifle herself. Below the dark metal lies a glimpse of yellowed bone. It grins at her with blackened teeth and nods its head slightly at her before dropping its visor, and continuing on the lonely road towards the sounds of an approaching mob. The rider straightens up and steers its grinning mount towards them. Severa stays motionless until the clomping dies away. She darts out of the bushes when she hears screaming in the direction that the figure went in and runs down the opposite route.

The fog dissipates as she barrels through it, lungs burning. Severa bolts out of it onto a snowy path, gravel crunching under her boots. It’s only when she stumbles and her legs nearly give out that she looks back at the narrow passageway between two mountains. The fog disappears, but Severa doesn’t go back. She crosses upward onto the nearest hill. At the top, she spots the village she and Lon’qu were at, and groans at the distance before grumbling and making her way back.

Severa returns to the village after an hour of walking. The entrance is deserted, and she expects the worst when she hurries into the village square and is struck by the people clustered in confused and frightened huddled until she waves them to go home.

Lon’qu turns up shortly after, having borrowed a horse of his own. He drops a few coins into the indignant owner’s hands and faces her, his expression startling her with the amount of fear in it. He draws her off to the side, whispering, “Did you do that to them?”

Severa blinks. “Do what to whom?”

“The Grimleal at the mountain crevice. They—“ Lon’qu shakes his head. They’re no longer a threat. Any of them.”

Severa thinks of the passing knight in his heavy, dark armour. “What happened?”

Lon’qu is quiet for a long moment. “Getting torn apart by animals is more merciful than what happened to them.” He tilts his head. “Be grateful to whatever spared you in the mountains. It may not do so twice.”

Severa shivers and rubs at her arms. Duly noted.

They stay the night at the village inn, deciding not to risk running into the fog until it lifts. In the morning, the sky is bright blue above them and clear as a day in spring. Severa feels something warm in her chest when she steps outside, the weight lifting slightly. 

A moment later, she is surprised when a young blonde girl runs to her with a basket of wrapped bread and cheese, throws her arms around Severa’s knees in a tight squeeze before dropping the container and running back to an elderly woman with two other small children. Severa realizes that it’s the fortune teller when the woman nods in acknowledgment before leading her grandchildren down towards the village square. She stares after them before picking up the basket.

Lon’qu peers at the food suspiciously until Severa tells him about its origins. He nods solemnly, tucks the food tightly into their bags, and passes the basket to the innkeeper. He requests for the older man to return it. 

They leave shortly afterwards, heading north towards a tall cliff that Severa is hoping they're not going to ascend.

Lon’qu glances. “It’s a good thing we have extra food. We’ll be climbing that for the next two days.”

Joy.

They do make it up after much swearing on Severa’s part and ignoring on Lon’qu’s. Most of it was her trailing after Lon’qu as he finds paths that she would have never spot, gripping onto the wall at some point until her forearms hurts. It’s not without a significant breath of relief that Severa clambers after him as he guides them onto a wide plateau.

Severa steps onto the rocky platform, dusted with snow. Above her stands a tree growing between the face of two cliffs, roots twining themselves together as wide as she is. The tree stands suspended in midair, held upright only the tendrils of a few tough roots still holding onto the opposing sides. Severa stares up at the green leaves emerging from the top of its branches. How can it survive like that, let alone flourish?

She walks around a neat brook at her feet that emerges from somewhere below the tree. “What is that?”

Lon’qu looks at the tree, his expression unreadable. “That is the Mila tree. It’s also known as the Tree of Life.”

“How can it grow there? What’s holding it up?”

“There are many things that shouldn’t grow in places of adversity, but they defy us and grow anyway.” When Severa stares at him, he adds, “It is said to have sprung from the body of a goddess if that answers your question.”

It doesn’t.

“The Mila tree is named after the Earth God who also participated in the Miracle of Darna,” Severa cites, pulling from her memories of her father’s teachings. “There’s another tree on a mountain said to be nearby where her brother is said to lie.”

It was the first time in recorded history that showed that gods can die. 

Lon’qu lays his bag on the ground and searches through it. “How do mere humans kill two gods?”

Severa frowns. “History said with the Falchion.” Which has now been lost to time.

“The Falchion is just a sword. Where did it come from?”

“From Naga.” Carved from one of her tooth, or so theology says. Severa has trouble believing how exactly a steel sword could be made a dragon’s tooth.

“Exactly. It came from another god. Humans cannot kill gods on their own power. You need the power of a god to kill another one.” He looks up at her. “What does the Falchion do?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Answer the question, Severa.”

“It seals the gods away.”

“How?”

When Severa doesn’t answer, Lon’qu does. “It’s a soul stealer. It seals them by taking their souls and keeping them in the sword itself.”

Severa gapes at him. That’s not a fate she’d wish on anyone. “How do you know all that?”

Lon’qu doesn’t answer. He sits back on his heels. “Do you know why I brought you here?”

Severa shakes her head.

Lon’qu draws out two swords from the package he carries in his bag, their edges glinting in the sun. “You’re going to fight me. And if you live, you win.”

Severa scowls. “That’s not a good joke.”

Lon’qu growls, “Do I look like I joke?” He stands up and shoves a sword into Severa’s hands. “Take me seriously. Otherwise, you’ll die.”

“This is insane!” But on par for Lon’qu. “I’m not doing—“

Lon’qu rushes forward and swings at Severa’s neck with enough force to cleave through it. She yelps and ducks, the blade whistling by her nose as Lon’qu quickly whirls around to slice upward. Severa blocks the blow, the force nearly knocking her sword from her hand. Her arm goes numb from the strike.

He really means to kill her.

Severa leaps back. “You’re crazy!” She parries Lon’qu attack to her collarbone, sparks dancing off of their blades. “I’m just a kid!”

“So was I when the Grimleal came!” he snarls. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” Lon'qu kicks her so hard that Severa falls and bounces off of the ground. She gasps, feeling a searing pain in her side before snarling and rolling to her feet. She launches herself at Lon'qu. 

“I deserve to! After everything that’s happened! Everything that’s my fault!” Severa snarls and smashes Lon’qu’s sword back with a sweep, surprising him. “You don’t get to tell me what to feel.”

“No,” he agrees, startling her before twisting his hip to carve a line into her thigh. Severa screams as his sword swings up, beads of her blood holding in a red arc for a heartbeat. “But self-pity is the most useless emotion you can have. And it’s hurting you.”

“You’re hurting me!” Severa limps back, favouring her other leg. “Nothing you’ve done has helped me or my family back in Ylisse.”

“I can’t help someone who won’t help themselves.” Lon’qu dashes into Severa’s guard, so close that she can see the snowflakes on his lashes. “And I’m sure Naga would agree.” He grabs Severa’s shoulders, releasing his sword, and yanks her down into his knee. He rams it into her side where De Rais had kicked her before, and Severa gasps, feeling something crack inside of her. It’s more than one this time. She supposes that it's only fitting that in addition to breaking her spirit, he breaks her ribs.

He lets go, and Severa drops to her knees. She coughs and sprays blood across the stone floor, scrabbling to find her dropped sword when Lon’qu’s boot closes on her hand. She freezes. His weight feels enormous against her cold, thin fingers.

Severa bares her teeth, tasting iron on her tongue. “Do you want me to yield?”

Lon’qu is expressionless. “You already did. Just not to me.” He picks up the fallen sword a couple of inches from her hand and steps over her. Severa tenses, expecting him to plunge his blade into her back, but he doesn’t.

He leaves her to die on the frozen platform by herself.

Severa shivers and coughs, cursing Lon'qu and herself for being foolish enough to follow him before collapsing onto her back. She opens her eyes to look up at the tree above her with its impossible roots and green leaves, growing even when its circumstances are against it. The stone floor is cold against her neck and back, and Severa wonders if she deserves this, because it was her fault that Noire left, that Owain died, that Lucina’s heart is broken once again, and that the Grimleal are ravaging helpless villages to find her. In the back of her mind, she welcomes the darkness creeping over her thoughts with a small sense of relief and closes her eyes.

She's not quite sure what this feeling is, like falling down a warm cavern away from a dwindling light high above her, but it's not painful nor frightening. Like sleep calling to her mind, but this time, Severa's not sure if she'll wake up. 

She thinks of Owain and wonders if she'll see him again with his bright smile and brighter crown of hair, and something warms her chest. Would he judge her for leading him to his death, or would he welcome her as he always with affection? Or would he frown at her appearance, and ask why did she come when she still had Lucina to protect and return home to. Would he be as disappointed in her as Severa was in herself? 

Severa coughs, something warm splattering out of her mouth, and she's brought back immediately to the cold around her like someone rapidly dragged her though a tunnel to the end. She rolls onto her front and immediately regrets it, white fire burning down one side of her body that nearly makes her scream. Crawling, she pulls herself forward across bloodstained stone, nails digging into the grooves of the platform, but she's moving on. 

She's not going to meet Owain today. And one day, she's going to return to Lucina.

Severa struggles for a few feet until she gasps against the floor, her broken ribs feeling like knives digging into her side and lungs. When she lifts her head, she's stunned to see Lon'qu quickly getting up from a nearby stone where he'd been waiting. He rushes over to help her up, growling. “Gods, if you were any more stubborn, we'd waited here until spring.”

Severa's tongue feels heavy. She slurs, “Didn't you leave me?”

“No.” He lifts her carefully into his arms, and Severa slumps into his chest as Lon'qu steps forward, carrying her as easily as a child. “I was waiting for you to choose yourself.” He moves across the stone towards a cave at the base of the tree, footsteps sure and sound. “Take a rest. You've earned it.”

Severa's out before he finishes.

——

At night when Severa wakes up around a campfire with an steaming pot on it, Lon'qu gets her to sit up and binds bandages around Severa's ribs. "They shouldn't be broken."

Severa coughs. "Thanks for almost killing me."

Lon'qu turns and pours her a bowl of stew from the pot on the fire. They're camped under the Mila tree, and the space feels warm, inviting. "If I wanted you dead, you would be." He holds it in front of Severa, who hesitates. "Eat."

"I think you forgot that you cracked my ribs, and it hurts to breathe." Severa takes the bowl anyway, inhaling sharply when she lifts her arms. "Thanks," she grumbles. She takes a spoonful of the stew, and devours three more bowlfuls by the time Lon'qu returns with more firewood.

He arches an eyebrow at her before lifting the pot by its handle and laying twigs into the fire. He moves the container closer to her feet.

Severa ignores him. She stretches and is amazed when she can breathe with less pain in her side. “This stew is magic or something. I feel better already.”

Lon'qu shakes his head, his hair growing shaggy and slightly long. “You have the blood of Blaggi. You recover much faster from training at a rate most athletes would pay for, which means you can train twice as often and as hard. You also heal from injuries faster too.”

Severa scoffs at his word. “Blaggi? The legendary priest of the Twelve Crusaders?”

Lon'qu shrugs. “From your father's side, or so he's told me the last time I contacted him. You may doubt me, but you have to admit that you're already recovering at an inhuman speed.”

Severa doesn't refute his words. “So, what? I have the blood of two gods?”

"Many warriors would kill to have your Gods' blood." 

Severa snorts. "What? Old Odo and his magic speed?"

"That, and Blaggi's ability to heal." Lon'qu leans forwards on his elbows, eyes glowing from the light of the fire. "You have little talent compared to Chrom's daughter in terms of natural athletic ability. Yet, you trained twice as hard as any soldier I've trained, because you bounce back three times as quickly.

"With your Odo blood, it's a deadly combination." He shifts. "Odo was a—"

"A crusader who helepd to take down Grima. And he was a demon hunter too," Severa cuts in.

"Yes, but Odo's god was a demon who hunted her own kind. A traitor. All of the twelve gods were."

Severa sits up. She's never heard this part of her father's teachings. "How do you know that?"

"Do you think weapons and secrets are all the Emblem keeps?" He stares at her. "We keep knowledge too." 

Silence, Severa shifts, “When are you actually going to share it with me?”

Lon'qu turns his face away, and Severa counts the flecks of grey in his hair amidst dark strands. His face is unlined and youthful, save for the heavy look in his eyes like a captain carrying the weight of his dead men. In another life, Severa thinks he could even be her father. “Grima’s greatest weapon against his enemies was sowing seeds of doubt and fear, and letting them grow. My own doubts came from my regret.” He pulls out the jade necklace from the village. “And that springs from the death of my fiancée.”

He tilts his head, and Severa snaps her mouth shuts, feeling something ease between them. “Ke’ri grew up with me in my village. She went to fight against the Grimleal while I trained under Gules.” He pauses. “She was one of your mother’s top officers and was there when your mother’s squad was caught out. She didn’t make it.”

Severa lowers her eyes. “Do you blame my mother?”

Lon’qu shakes his head. “She was a leader in a bad situation, and forced to make an impossible choice. As we all do at one point or another.” 

He stares into the fire, and the harsh light of the flames, Lon’qu looks older, wiser. Sadder. “My regret is not that she died. It’s that I didn’t marry her when I had the chance.”

Severa opens her mouth before closing it. She waits and lets Lon’qu respond in his own time.

After several minutes, he continues on, “We were waiting for the end of the war to get married, since she had her training and I mine. I had promised to do so when everything ended. She knew she was ready, but I was hesitant, unsure. I didn’t know if I was the man she deserved—not with the things I've done—but she was willing to wait for me to become him. I took too long, and there’s no longer an end of the war for her.”

Lon’qu glances at the jade necklace nestled in his hands like a tiny heartbeat. “You may not have time to wait to enjoy your life with somebody, Severa. Nor they with you. Every day that you have someone, be grateful that you do, because one day, you won’t.”

Severa wipes at her eyes, and Lon’qu pretends he doesn’t see it. She asks. “Is that why you're not scared to touch the Gae Bolg?”

“How could it curse me more than myself?” Lon'qu shrugs. “The only thing that matters is whether or not you enjoy the moments you spend together, and whether or not you love yourself enough that you can still be happy when they're gone.” 

Severa thinks of her parents, of Lucina so far away, and something hot and bitter climbs into her throat. "What's the point of having someone else? Aren't you better alone?"

Lon'qu stares at the fire. "Happiness is only real when it is shared, Severa."

Severa turns her face away in grief. After a few moments, she moves to sit beside Lon'qu. "Do you miss her?"

Lon'qu stares ahead. "Every day."

She think of the last time she saw Lucina with an expression that made Severa want to run back to her. "I miss mine too." She gets up. “But I'm going to do everything I can to get back to her. I'm not going to let what happened stop me.” 

“Of course. You're not your past. You never were. You can choose to have a happier future.”

Severa scoffs to cover up the exposed feeling inside. She wipes at her cheeks, her eyes, and growls in frustration. “I don't get it. Why am I crying?”

Lon'qu doesn't turn from his place at the fire. “People cry when they heal too, Severa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Do not go Gentle into that Good Night_ \- Dylan Thomas
> 
> "Do not go gentle into that good night,  
> Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  
> Because their words had forked no lightning they  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.
> 
> Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  
> Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  
> And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.
> 
> Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
> Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> And you, my father, there on the sad height,  
> Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light."


	3. So, Eden Sank to Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucina struggles to find a way to bring Ylisse back to control, since her father and his deputies are close to being hauled away and interrogated for the Grimleal's crimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Haunt_  
> 
> "My memory loves you; it asks about you all the time."  
> \- Roxxanna Kurtz
> 
> (...I got distracted with finishing the potato research story.)

Lucina dreams that Severa drowned in a river. 

In the hazy, green smudge of grass, she watches from the shoreline of the river as someone floats by, red hair sprawled around her like a bloodstained halo, and it’s with a jab of terror in her throat that she recognizes the body.

Severa’s expression is serene, peaceful as if sleeping while a bouquet of white flowers is held in her clasped hands. Petals of lilies and orchids the colour of fresh bone flutter into the water as what’s left of her drifts down the river.

Lucina wakes up with tears in her eyes. She wipes at her face with the back of her hand as she chokes. She knows.

Severa is the kind of girl who haunts you long after she’s gone.

Lucina gets up out of bed, her movements listless. She scrubs at her face in the washroom, showers, and drifts downstairs like a ghost against the wall. Robin greets her in the kitchen, smile tight and bags under her eyes. She absentmindedly hands Lucina a bowl of scrambled eggs and peers out the kitchen at something unseen, frowning. Morgan’s already slipped out, quiet as he dodges their parents and heads out to school early. 

Lucina’s father hasn’t been home in three days, which is now routine. He spends his night sleeping in his office as the Emblem’s Special Investigations Unit tears apart his department. It doesn’t help that his Assistant Sheriff is under investigation and his Undersheriff suspected of conspiracy.

Robins hunches over the kitchen counter, head in her hands. Her headaches have gotten worse since the uprising and the disappearance of the Mayer women. She hasn’t taken one of Tharja’s potions for months, and it shows in the spurts of long minutes where she's grasping her head in pain. Lucina urged her to see a doctor, but Aunt Lissa can't seem to find the problem. She doesn't know if there's one physically.

Robin inhales sharply and stares at the counter below her. She mutters something like, “we're running out of time,” as her fingers dance across sheets of scribbled plans and notes, looking for something only she can see. “They'll take Cordelia.” 

Alarmed, Lucina comes up to her mother. “Who will?”

Robin starts and shuffles her papers out of reach. “No one that should be your concern.” She rubs at her eyes again. “You go ahead to school. I'll catch up.”

Lucina grasps at her mother's arm. Robin looks so tired. “Mother, do you need to rest? Isn't there anything I can do?”

Robin shakes her head. “Your father and I just need to figure out how to get the Emblem to leave. Just trust us.” When Lucina tenses, Robin takes a long look at her daughter. “There's nothing you can do right now. You're normally level-headed, but even the most rational person may be driven to bad decisions in desperation.” She places her hand on Lucina's grip before gently pulling it off. “Be patient with us. We'll figure something out." She smiles, her expression strained as if fighting through great pain, like screws are slowly being pushed into her temples. “You better head off now.” She kisses her daughter's brow. “Goodbye, Lucina.” 

Lucina slips out the front door and gazes at the sky, mute and grey. She wonders if Severa looks up at the same one and thinks of Ylisse. She wonders if Severa even thinks of her at all, or if she was still aliv—

She doesn't allow herself to think about it.

At school, Lucina drifts in and out of focus, staring blankly at her textbooks in class. Outside the windows, bordering on the school grounds, are men and women buttoned in coats of muted navy wool, expressions as cold as their brass buttons winking gold in the sporadic rays of sunshine. They stand outside the school; the diner, and anywhere they think they can get information out of people, including Lucina’s house and the Faulkners’. They always cite their investigation of Ylisse’s departmental uprising as the reason for their invasiveness, hounding the deputies involved for months and all but threatening to haul Cordelia and Frederick away to the Emblem judges for trial for infractions so numerous, the second report was generated to help list them.

The reason for the Emblem's action is simple: they have few other pieces of evidence other than eyewitnesses and photographs of the crime scenes, since the bodies of the rebelling deputies have disappeared. De Rais, in particular, left bone and blood all over the Mayers’ kitchen, but when the Emblem's forensic team arrived at the house, they only found a blood trail that led into the woods as if the body got up and shambled away. 

The corpses of the other Grimleal officers also vanished or, rather, were stolen, having been gathered and sent to the Emblem's morgue located in Valm in a secured police vehicle. The truck was found smoking on the side of a road a day later, its metal frame bent with its side gone like something huge tore a ragged hole. Every body was missing, including the drivers’. The investigation unit sent by the Emblem was apoplectic, to put things mildly. They cracked down on everything in Ylisse, even threatening Gaius several times over for his suspicious part in hiring a bartender who disappeared along with two teenaged girls. The townspeople railed back, resulting in spats and scuffles on the streets with the Emblem officers that ended with the officers drawing their pistols as warnings and fury in people's eyes on both sides. 

It's bad, to say the least.

Cynthia snaps her fingers in front of Lucina, and Lucina blinks. “Mrs. Clearwater is asking you a question.”

Lucina glances up, and the biology teacher is frowning at her, a slight crease between the sharp angles of her brows. The question on the chalkboard behind Mrs. Clearwater asks about the fundamental building blocks of DNA in crisp, white lines of chalk, and Lucina stares at her textbook before she stands up with the answer located in a paragraph with particularly tiny font. Her classmates glare and mutter amongst themselves. They've been doing that more often, since the Emblem agents have arrived and locked down the town.

It comes to no surprise to Lucina that Mrs. Clearwater asks to stay behind after class. 

Once the students shuffle out with Cynthia casting a worried glance behind her, Mrs. Clearwater closes the door before turning to study her. Lucina stares back, and there's a long moment of silence before Mrs. Clearwater sighs and touches the bridge of her glasses. “You are normally a highly attentive student. I am starting to suspect that the fascinating nature of mitosis is not enough to catch your attention these days. Not that anyone can fault you with the pressure the Emblem is putting on your father to come up with answers to their inquiries.” Her expression shifts to something softer. “Is there something that I can lend my assistance in, Lucina?”

Lucina shakes her head. "Not unless you can get them to go away."

"Unfortunately, no. They seem to have entrenched themselves in the town like a cancer." Mrs. Clearwater's expression tightens. “Are the other students' rumours bothering you?”

"The ones that say the Emblem are planning to pin what happened three months ago on my father and his deputies? No, not at all." Lucina lets out a breath. She wishes they were rumours. “You don't blame my family for what's happened to Ylisse? The constant patrols and interrogations of the Emblem?”

Mrs. Clearwater shoves up her glasses on her nose. She grits her teeth. “I am not so easily deceived as others of lesser reasoning capabilities. I know where the true enemy lies.” She glances out the window where a uniformed member of the Special Investigation Unit patrols the grounds. “And you, Lucina, would do well to recall that the enemy is not yourself.”

She turns and swiftly makes her way out of her classroom, pausing at the door. "I would advise you to replenish yourself with a meal and rest, Miss Flynn. You look in need of it." She glances back and nods before disappearing around the doorframe.

Lucina stares after her before shaking her head and feeling like her thoughts are swimming through thick syrup. After everything that's happened today, she decides to head to her aunt Emmeryn’s house after school to ask for counsel, since her aunt is famed throughout the region for being an exceptional listener with a wisdom close to sagely.

After the final bell rings and she declines a sad Cynthia’s invite to hang out, Lucina heads straight north towards her aunt’s place. After about 20 minutes of walking through snow that reaches her ankles, she finds herself on the edge of a sprawling estate, bare of the bright flowers that stand in front of the manor in the spring. Emmeryn, as the eldest, inherited the property as dictated in the will of her father. However, the grounds remain empty and devoid of the chatter of children, since Lucina's aunt never married, citing that she had too much work in caring for the town to start a family.

Lucina crosses the grounds and uses the key Emmeryn gave to her to enter. She stomps the snow off her boots before slipping them off and makes her way to the sitting room, only to find the mayor having tea with two strangers. “Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll come back later.”

Emmeryn waves her to join them. “You came all this way, Lucina.” She gestures to the man who wears his silver hair tied back and a solemn expression on his face, and the young woman with dark hair beside him. “This is Yen’fay and his sister Say’ri. They’re old friends of mine.”

Say’ri stands to offer Lucina her hand, and Yen’fay follows after glancing over the young girl. Lucina shakes the woman’s hand, feeling calluses beneath her palm. Say’ri smiles. “We’re visiting your town, and your aunt was kind enough to let us stay.”

Yen’fay’s grip is tight and cold. “We heard that Ylisse is having some trouble with its sheriff department and thought to offer our expertise.”

“In legal matters and investigations?” Lucina asks.

A corner of Say’ri’s mouth quirks up. “Something like that.”

Yen’fay glares at his sister before gesturing for Lucina to sit down. “Come. We would love to hear your thoughts on what’s happening here.”

Lucina hesitates, but at Emmeryn’s encouraging nod, she takes a seat by her aunt. 

Emmeryn brings out another cup of fine porcelain from a nearby cupboard and pours her niece a stream of pale yellow tea. She smiles at Lucina. “You can go ahead and tell them what’s going on. You may be hesitant at first to divulge your thoughts. However, I reassure you that I trust them with my life.”

Lucina hesitates before relaxing. She tells them of the attack on Ylisse a few months ago that caused two girls to go missing and of the burning church in Valm. Yen’fay and Say’ri nod and ask questions to prompt her, leaning forward and seeming to listen with their whole bodies. When Lucina comes to the part about who went missing, something about the kindness in their eyes breaks the reserve inside of her, and she ends up telling them everything about Severa—her story with Owain, her life in Ylisse, and Lucina’s fear that she’ll never see her again.

Say’ri reaches out to squeeze Lucina’s hand, and Lucina nearly chokes. “You’re such a brave girl. Very resilient. I know if my lover were to disappear for months, I would go mad.”

Lucina flushes. “I didn’t say—“

Say’ri waves her off. “No need. It was evident in your tone and your eyes how much she meant to you.” Her eyes twinkle. “That, and the fact that your aunt is more of a gossip than you know.”

Emmeryn coughs and puts down her tea cup. “I may have mentioned a few things I’ve heard around town. Regardless, we need to bring our attention back to the topic at hand. Over the past couple of months, the director has been bringing in her own people and stationing them around Ylisse. The question is why?'

“I have noticed the situation resembles Valm before its attack.” Yen'fay frowns. “Perhaps, she's looking for something?”

Say'ri shakes her head. “What could she possibly be looking for? It's been three months since your town's attack. More than plenty of time to gather evidence.”

Emmeryn sips from her cup. “Despite her thorough investigation, the director appears to be unsatisfied with what she's gathered.”

Say'ri leans forward. “You think she's searching for—”

Yen'fay places a hand on his sister's shoulder and shakes his head. He glances at Lucina. “Regardless of what the director may be doing, we would be honoured to offer our assistance, however we can, to a dear friend of ours.” 

Lucina bites her tongue, debating with herself before she adds, "There...is a rumour that the Emblem is looking to paint my father and his deputies as the main conspirators of Valm's and Ylisse's attack. The director of their Special Investigations Unit says it's too much of a coincidence that we just happened to survive a church bombing when so many others died, and that we have no idea of what happened to Severa and Noire." Her hand clenches on the handle of her tea cup. "We don't. We really don't know where they are."

Yen'fay snorts. "That sounds like her—a woman with a heart modelled after a bulldog's in her persistency and an ego as large as her capabilities. Many of her investigations tend to wrap up too neatly with the officers she looked into being found conveniently guilty of their accused crimes."

Say'ri glances sharply at him. "Brother, it is not kind to speak badly of someone who isn't here." The stress of her words makes Lucina wonder what she really means. "Let's change the subject to something more pleasant." She smiles at Lucina. “You're a young woman about to graduate high school soon, and make her way into the world. You must have lots of goals and dreams. If you could have anything, what would you like?”

Lucina shakes her head. “All I want is freedom—a world with no more lies. And...for Severa and Noire to return safely.”

Yen'fay eyes her and a corner of his lip twitches upwards while Emmeryn frowns. Say'ri studies Lucina carefully before smiling once more. “I've heard Emmeryn say the same thing once. It's a worthy dream.” She glances between Lucina and her aunt. “I see the resemblance between you two. It’s impressive to see such strong women with strong hearts. I wonder if you have her poetic inclinations as well.”

Emmeryn tilts her head. “I often said that I wondered if life is a dream within a dream.” She covers her niece’s hand with her own and squeezes. “As for your circumstances, be strong. Be courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for Naga will be with you wherever you go. You have sorrow now, but you will see them again and your hearts will rejoice. No one can take your joy or your love from you.”

Lucina feels something release in her chest, like a trap loosening around her heart. “You always say the right things. I hope to match your eloquence one day.”

Emmeryn waves off her praise. “I only spoke the truth as I saw it. If my thoughts are profound, it is because I submit to words and teachings wiser than I.” She gestures to her copy of the Book of Naga shielded behind a glass cabinet. “I read Naga’s words daily to guide me and others, since my father died.”

Lucina studies Emmeryn’s copy, which seems similar in design to the one she sees Libra read at church. However, the brass on the book before her gleams brightly like gold while the azure cover beneath it is vivid, like a summer sky with no clouds. The book hardly looks used, despite Emmeryn’s claims that she’s read it for decades, and if Lucina stares at it for a long time, she swears she hears a calming whisper like a soothing balm on a wound.

She asks her aunt, “Do you clean and polish it? It always seems new.”

Emmeryn smiles. “I take good care of the things dear to me.” 

They chat for a few more minutes before Yen'fay and Say'ri excuse themselves to unpack their things, as they had just arrived that day. After bidding them goodnight, Lucina heads towards Emmeryn's front door when her aunt pulls out a sheet from a nearby cabinet drawer and catches Lucina before she leaves. Emmeryn hands her a sheet of handwritten words in sharp black ink against parchment. “Give this page to your father when you see him. I copied the lines from the Book of Naga itself, and its words may guide his thoughts and grant him protection in these trying times.”

Lucina takes the page, and folds it into a neat sheet before placing it gently in her pocket. She looks at her aunt curiously. “How can words grant protection?”

Emmeryn smiles and taps her temple, ever the teacher. “Your words influence your thoughts, which controls your feelings, actions, and habits. Your habits shape your character, which forms your destiny. How you speak to yourself can determine how your fate turns out. Speak well to yourself and others, Lucina, for to do otherwise is to guarantee that you’ll fail in any endeavour you undertake. And words can be more powerful than you may know.” She leans over and kisses her niece’s brow. "Goodbye, Lucina.”

Lucina leaves her aunt’s property with the page in her pocket. She feels the sheet tingle in a calming way that is like crystal bells ringing on a summer day, and her thoughts sharpening like a sword for use. Perhaps, Emmeryn is right.

Lucina makes her way to her father’s sheriff department with night already settled in the sky, her breath a furious, white stream in the winter air. She arrives at the steps to his building, the snow hardly disturbed on the stone, as no one had bothered to come or leave. She climbs the stairs and opens to the door to silence and empty desks. Half of the department had been arrested or killed months ago while the other half started leaving earlier to avoid the director of the Special Investigations Unit who arrives every day to ask the same questions.

Lucina huffs as she pulls up her scarf over her face. Even inside, the chill seeps into the air and the wooden desks, their surfaces cold like brushing against ice. She strides through the room, footsteps echoing like she's walking through a cathedral, a testament to the dead and missing with the bare desks and chairs. She finds her father's office at the back and raps on his door. The door stays closed for several seconds, and Lucina's about to knock again when Chrom opens the door, dark bags under his eyes. He spots Lucina, and he straightens up, smiling as he reaches out to hug her. “You're the one good thing I've seen today.” 

Lucina sighs, relaxing into him before stepping away. “It's been a while since I've seen you at home, Father.”

Chrom's shoulders slump. “I know. I'm sorry. It's just—”

“Cordelia.” Lucina guesses right when Chrom tenses. “The Special Investigation Unit from the Emblem want to take her back to their headquarters, correct?”

Chrom doesn't say anything. He ushers her in and closes the door. “It's not so simple as taking her. As the only eyewitness to what happened to the Grimleal base in Southtown Crossing, and one out of two that can testify as to the scene at the Mayers' house, she's crucial to the Emblem's investigation for a culprit. However, the way they've spoken to her bordered on harassment, like they suspect her of more.” 

Lucina studies his expression. “They want to blame her for what happened, don't they?” She recalls the day Severa left, and the armed officers from the Emblem arriving and heading straight for Cordelia. “They think she has something to do with everything.” She glances around the office. "Where is she?"

"I sent her home." Chrom's tone is firm. "Losing her daughter and being accused of everything short of murder and conspiracy for several months takes a toll on a deputy, no matter how talented they may be." He sighs and closes his eyes. “I would request help from Valm to deal with the investigation unit, but Valm has been on lockdown for ages. And if anything, they have been asking for help from us, considering how badly the city was damaged in the bombing.” He opens his eyes and shakes his head. "So, what are you doing here, Lucina? Did you come just to visit me and tell me that I should come home?" 

Lucina shakes her head and pulls out the paper from her pocket.

Chrom's eyes light up at the folded paper she hands him. “Emmeryn's words always cheer me up.” He spreads the the parchment carefully on his desk. “Do you want to do the honours, Lucina?”

Lucina leans over and reads the neat words on the sheet. "May Naga answer you when you are in the distress; may the name of the God of Heim protect you all to deliver you from your enemies and shield you in her refuge until disaster has passed. Though you may walk in the midst of trouble, She preserves your life. She stretches out her left hand against the anger of your foes, and with her right hand, she saves you. Ask her to keep you safe from the hands of the wicked, protect you from the violent, who devises way to trip you at your feet. You may be hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; and struck down, but not destroyed. You will fear no evil, for Naga's love and guidance will follow you all the days of your life, so long as you never give away your birthright and life in her, and so Naga will shield you until the end of your days." 

Lucina leans back, silent. At the words before her, something warm slips through her veins like a fresh breath in crisp mountain air, a calm spreading through her mind, and a strength growing in her muscles that reminds her of the burning library under Valm. Beside her, her father gathers his hands in a prayer and bows his head. It's funny that she's never seen him do that before. 

Chrom looks over and smiles. "Naga's words are powerful, aren't they? I remembered that Emmeryn would always pray over me in the war days every time I left to go back to the front on the rare days I returned home. It's strange, but I genuinely felt like I was being protected and watched." He shrugs, grinning. "Heck, I swear that sometimes I even glowed."

He certainly seems to be doing so now, a golden cast shining under his skin as he straightens up like a young god rising from the sun. Lucina pulls off her glove and examines her hand, wondering if it was just her imagination that she matches her father.

A door in the distance slams open, and both of their heads snap up. Chrom crosses his office, and Lucina trails behind him. They step out and spot someone heading towards them with a stride that suggests murderous intentions.

Chrom stiffens. "Oh, crap. It's the director."

The director of the Special Investigations Unit is a tall, thin woman with a sharp face like a hatchet. She strides towards them, steps precise and hard with each clatter of her heels like eighth notes banged on wood. Her grey pantsuit is ironed free of wrinkles and her glossy brown hair, streaked with grey, is tied up in a bun with her mouth set in a tight-lipped line. 

Chrom pushes Lucina behind him. “Don’t talk to her if you don’t have to.”

“To avoid saying something I shouldn’t?”

“No,” Chrom scowls, “she’s... unpleasant to deal with.”

The woman stops in front of them, eyes narrowing. “Sheriff Flynn.” Her syllables are as sharp and hard as her steps. She surveys Lucina, and her lip curls. “And your daughter?”

Lucina glares back, but she doesn't say anything

The director's lips twitch. "If it weren't for your father's interference, you'd be in Valm, testifying right now." She peels off her gloves like she's pulling off skin before she hauls a manila packet from her bag. From inside, she takes out a report of crisp, white sheets with edges that look like they could cut. “Returning to our previous conversation yesterday, one of your deputies was brutally murdered inside the house of a disappeared girl while you were ambushed in Valm and barely managed to escape with your hides. That is gross incompetence, however you wish to call it. As it stands, your failures in this matter are numerous, and based on your actions which prevent me from accomplishing my goals, your actions suggest you do not wish the truth to be uncovered.”

She places the report down and lists off the faults on her fingers like a clock ticking in time. “Cover up of murder, conspiracy, hindering an official investigation—as it stands, your integrity is called into question with your extreme reluctance to speak to key witnesses." She glares at Lucina. "Deputy De Rais was personally recommended by me to your department, and he is murdered with his body stolen under your watch. Based on how you have repeatedly denied my requests to bring the main suspect into questioning at the Emblem Headquarters, I suspect that you are complicit in the crimes that happened in your town.” 

Chrom gazes at her. “The Emblem took jurisdiction over the crime scenes when they arrived, so I believe De Rais’ body was stolen under yours. And as I said, I stand by all statements I have given to you earlier. Unless you have reasonable doubts about my words, and, yet, I have not seen any evidence other than veiled accusations.”

The director goes quiet, her tone reminding Lucina of a coiling cobra. “I would be careful of what you are implying, Sheriff." She snatches her report and flips through the pages. "Where is that bartender who was seen driving towards the murder scene? We haven't been able to locate him.”

Chrom stiffens. “Why?”

She looks at him. “He’s missing, Deputy De Rais is dead, and the Faulkner girl has disappeared. What do you think?” She takes the manila packet and tucks her report neatly back in. “Based on the gathered evidence, he seems he is involved in kidnapping, first degree murder of several counts, destruction of private property, and many other crimes. In fact, I would be surprised if someone like him won't warrant a consideration of capital punishment when we catch him.” Her lips curls. “Men like him deserve it.” 

“Capital punishment as been illegal for the last two decades,” Chrom argues. “The punishment for the worst crimes is life imprisonment without parole.”

She smiles at him, a thin cruel line across her mouth. “Haven't you heard? The Emblem is changing some of its views on the punishment for criminals, and Internal Affairs is heading the charge for the long-needed changes. However, I suspect that he is not the only one involved in De Rais' murder.” Director Ratchet hands Chrom another report, who takes it in surprise. “The blood obtained at the Mayers’ residence had two sources. One was deputy De Rais, and the other had at least 50% of the alleles in common with your Assistant Sheriff, indicating a mother, sister, or—“ Her eyes narrow. “—daughter. Now, where is the Faulkner girl?” 

Chrom juts out his chin. “We are as in the dark as you are.”

Lucina can't stand this interrogation. "It was the Grimleal. We told you many times."

The director snaps her gaze towards her, eyes sharp and cold like a broken piece of glass. “There are no more Grimleal.”

“Yes, there is!” Lucina glares into the woman's face. “I know Sheriff De Rais was a deputy you recommended, but why are you taking it so personally?”

The director stares at Lucina. Her lip curls. She looks on the verge of answering before she whips away, her footsteps a staccato clip along the wood floor. She stops at the exit and looks back, her expression frosting through Lucina's insides. “Unless you have definitive proof that this was the work of the long-dead Grimleal, I am going on the basis of massive incompetence or conspiracy to cover up a group crime. And trust me, if either you or your deputies are affiliated in any way, no one is never going to see the light of day again as long as I live.” She smiles for the first time. There’s no kindness in it. “I will make sure of that.”

The doors slam shut behind her, and Chrom lets out a long breath, the grey in his hair seeming to multiple visibly from that single encounter. "I can't wait until that woman leaves." He runs his hand through his hair, his fingers coming away slick with sweat before glancing back at his office. "I'm going to call it a day and wrap up. Can you go grab Emmeryn's paper for me while I'll turn off the lights on the other side of the building?"

Lucina nods. "Of course." She heads back into her father's office and grabs the sheet off of his desk. A hastily shoved-in paper juts out of a slightly open drawer of his desk, and Lucina peers at it, the lines and charts on it suggesting a map of some sort. She glances back to see if her father returned before she pulls it out and lays it flat on the desk. A outline of Ylisse sits before her, the roads and local buildings labeled clearly in black ink. At the southwest corner of the map is a drawn circle in red ink around an area that leads into an unvisited part of the woods. In her father's writing, he scrawls, "Severa said it would be around here," along a note that says "The Heart of Grima." 

Lucina stares at the map for a long while, and thinks back to the director's words. She tucks the sheet into her pocket and heads out to meet her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emmeryn's poem for this story:
> 
>  _A Dream Within a Dream_  
> 
> "Take this kiss upon the brow!  
> And, in parting from you now,  
> Thus much let me avow —  
> You are not wrong, who deem  
> That my days have been a dream;  
> Yet if hope has flown away  
> In a night, or in a day,  
> In a vision, or in none,  
> Is it therefore the less gone?  
> All that we see or seem  
> Is but a dream within a dream.
> 
> I stand amid the roar  
> Of a surf-tormented shore,  
> And I hold within my hand  
> Grains of the golden sand —  
> How few! yet how they creep  
> Through my fingers to the deep,  
> While I weep — while I weep!  
> O God! Can I not grasp  
> Them with a tighter clasp?  
> O God! can I not save  
> One from the pitiless wave?  
> Is all that we see or seem  
> But a dream within a dream?"  
> -Edgar Allan Poe


	4. The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucina follows the map out towards the woods on the edge of town, looking for what Severa left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all. It's been a while! My apologies, as I started a new job and it turns I do a ton of writing there. Hence, took a while to get used to restarting writing here. Please enjoy the latest chapter.

Cynthia huffs into her hands as she and Lucina reaches a frozen river near the edge of the town. “When I said we should go on an adventure, I meant in the comfort of my living room.” She stamps her feet for warmth. “Why are we here?” 

Lucina pulls out her father's map, frowning as she marks their path on it with a pen. She tucks both carefully back into an inner pocket in her jacket. “This is the general area that Father circled. I guess we need to cross and search the other side.” She glances at the white sheet of ice stretching from one bank to another and tentatively places a foot on the surface. 

Cynthia's eyes go wide. “Whoa, there! As much as I love adventure, I don't want to be dragging you out a river! What if you fall in?”

“I'm just testing the surface. And there's the church nearby for help if we need it.” Lucina steps down with her other foot. When she doesn't immediately fall through the ice, she carefully shuffles forward, watching the surface below her for cracks. The ice may be still, but the current below is still alive. A fall through would be fatal.

“Okay, adventure over. Let's go home!” Cynthia grabs at Lucina's arm which twists out of reach. “The easier you make this for me, the more I don't have to jump into a frozen river to save you.” 

“It's not going to break.” Lucina slowly makes her way across. 

Cynthia hollers, “Haven't you heard of treading on thin ice? You should! You get better marks in English than me!”

Lucina focuses on her steps, tuning out her friend. After what feels like too long, she clambers up onto the snowy bank on the other side, letting out a sigh of relief. She turns to Cynthia who gapes. “Are you coming?”

Cynthia paces on the other side before throwing up her hands and carefully waddling to the river. After scrutinizing the surface, Cynthia gets down onto her belly and decides to cross the ice by making some kind of swimming motion with her limbs like a penguin. 

After a few minutes when Cynthia manages to get herself halfway across, Lucina asks, “What are you—?”

“Not all of us have your awesome sense of balance, okay?” Cynthia glares down at the ice. “Some of us have to slide on our bellies.”

Lucina suppresses an urge to make a honking noise as Cynthia penguin-slides her way to her. She pulls her to her feet once her friend reaches the other side, and Cynthia huffs as she brushes herself off, trying to look as dignified with snow and bits of ice down her front. Lucina looks away into the woods in front of her, branches bare and reaching towards the sky like the throes of the dying frozen in time.

...maybe Severa's story from long ago is getting to her.

Cynthia grumbles as she shakes the last bit of snow from her shoulders. “So, where to now?”

Lucina frowns, heading into the words, snow crunching underfoot. “Severa said Owain was showing her around here the last time she saw him alive.”

“Wait, Severa? Owain? Mind me filling in?”

Lucina quickly relays the story as they walk further through the trees. Cynthia's expression shifts from disgruntled to incredulous to horrified. She slaps Lucina on the arm. “Okay, you want to find a cursed book that possibly killed your cousin?”

“Cynthia, it sounds like something that belongs to the Grimleal. If we find it, we could—”

“Get marked and die a horrible death? No thank you!” Cynthia turns about and glares at the trees. “Now, point me out, so we can get out of your deathplan right now.”

“...you don't know where we are, do you?”

“I know that we are not going to pick up a cursed book is where we're not going!” Cynthia stares at the path they took and heads in a direction perpendicular to their footsteps in the snow. Lucina's not sure she sees them. “I think we came from here.”

Lucina rubs at her eyes tiredly before reaching out to grab Cynthia's hood. “Let's just take a quick look around, and then I'll lead us out. I promise if we find it, we won't touch it. I was hoping to mark it on my father's map, so he would be able to dispose of it in his own time.” And give it to the Special Investigations Units as proof that the Grimleal exist. 

Cynthia sniffs. “Okay, I guess we can do that.”

“You still have no idea where you are, do you?”

“I'm beside you, and stopping you from doing stupid things you wouldn't normally do!” Cynthia glares. “And maybe I'm a little bit absolutely lost too! Also, if there're ghosts, you're on your own.”

Lucina smiles. “Duly noted.” She gazes around. “Let's take a look for a cave with stones piled in front of it.” She spots an outcropping of stones larger than she is in the distance. “Over there is a good spot.”

They head towards the cluster of rocks like stony fingers with Cynthia grumbling beside her and eyeing the trees as if expecting something to leap out at her. Lucina forgot how terrified Cynthia was of ghosts. 

Lucina halts them halfway to the trees. A throb begins behind her temples, and Lucina frowns. She doesn't know where it came from. “You don't have to approach them. I can inspect those stones myself.” 

Cynthia glares. “You think I came all this way to let you examine some creepy stones and unleash a terror upon the world by yourself?” She juts her chin out and grabs Lucina's arm. Her hand is shaking. “I'm right beside you, so shut up and stop telling me to quit.”

Lucina smiles and takes Cynthia's hand. “Okay. I'm just a little scared. Would you mind holding my hand as we look at it?” Lucina's grip is steady. 

Cynthia squeezes tightly, still trembling. “Yeah, I can do that. I'm your friend after all.” 

Lucina turns away. They make their way towards the stones, and a headache grows until Lucina is squinting against the sunlight as if the light is driving needles into her brain. Her hearing flickers, and she realizes that Cynthia is talking to her, babbling in that way she gets when she's frightened.“—found tunnels underneath the school. I wasn't sure if they're real, but Laurent said they're recorded in the school history as a means for escape during the war twenty years ago. He says they lead to routes and buildings all over town, but he's pranked me a few times, telling me things that I thought were true because they sound so smart coming from him—”

Lucina closes her eyes. “Cynthia, please stop.” She takes a breath and when she opens them, Cynthia glances at her worriedly. Lucina shakes her head and strides ahead, Cynthia trailing behind. When they arrive at the rocky outcropping, Lucina squeezes her eyes shut, the headache spiking into stabs of pain, and at the edge of her hearing, she hears low whispers of a language long forgotten. 

When she opens her eyes, Cynthia lets go and kicks at the ground. In front of them sits a cluster of stones piled onto each other. “There's no snow around this, and the grass underneath is dead.”

Lucina peers at the cracked surface of the ground, the sparse grass a shade of gray she's never seen before. It's not just the grass, but the stone around the pile looks more brittle than it should be. “This is ominous.”

Cynthia raises her hand. “All in favour of leaving?”

Lucina ignores her and plucks a stone the size of her palm from the pile. Warm air rushes out from the darkness behind the rocks like the breath of a sighing creature, and Lucina's skin prickles along her neck and arms. Cynthia's starting to sound like a voice of reason. 

Lucina swallows. “Okay, let's head out—”

From the darkness, she hears a laugh, low and guttural that sparks a writhing in her veins—a blood-borne pact that calls her forward. 

Cynthia grabs her arm, and Lucina blinks. A third of the rocks in front of her lie hurled to the side, and she sees several more in her hands. In front of her, a crack in the face of the wall gapes, the whispers growing louder and more insistent from it. She wonders when the stone pile was disassembled, and why Cynthia looks so pale.

Cynthia hisses, “What are you doing? You just started digging into that like a woman possessed!”

Lucina frowns. “I don't remember that.”

“That's it. We're getting you out of here!” Cynthia yanks on Lucina's arm, but her friend shrugs her off. “I'm serious! You're acting really weird!”

Lucina peers through the gap and touches the rock face, the surface cool beneath her fingertips. She knocks the rest off the rocks away, revealing a thin crack that a child could walk through. At the bottom, the hole widens so that a small, slender adult could crawl through. Lucina would have trouble, but Cynthia would be perfect. “There's something here.” 

“Yeah, that we're going not to touch. Let's go!” 

Lucina stares at the rock pile, hearing whispers, the promise of something familiar calls her from the cave beyond—an instinct pulling her forward like a song of a siren. She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts before slowly placing the stones back. She takes a long time to turn away.

The whispers trail at their steps, an unseen weight settling on Lucina's shoulders. Lucina twists to knock it off, but the weight tightens like invisible claws biting into her collarbone. She scrubs at her ears. “Do you hear that? The voices?”

Cynthia goes pale. “We are getting you back to your aunt.” 

They hurry across the snow with Cynthia hauling them through the forest as snowflakes come down in a flurry, landing on Lucina's eyelashes. Cynthia nearly trips and tumbles down the snow bank close to the river, but catches herself in time. She glances back worriedly at Lucina before sliding onto her belly and propelling herself across the ice while Lucina holds the side of her face with a thickly gloved hand. 

The whispers blossoms into laughter, a low rumbling that follows Lucina across she traces her way over the frozen river. Her head tightens, and she lurches forward, skidding on the ice that looks so much thinner than when they initially crossed. 

A faint ring of bells sound somewhere, but it's weak like the fading traces of a dream. The laughter rumbles again, and there's a scream, a spike driving itself into Lucina's thoughts. She trips on the ice and goes sprawling. 

She lands hard on her shoulder, knocking the air out of her. Her hands scrabble at the ice, and beneath her blue gloves, beneath the ice, Lucina swears something dark scrapes below the surface as if trying to claw through. Nausea rises in her throat, and she forces down the urge to retch. She scrambles across the ice, Cynthia's shouts muted in her ears as she runs away from the blossoming darkness beneath the ice. 

She hears that rumble again like a miniature earthquake, and it takes her a second to realize it's not the laughter. It's the ice. 

Black cracks race from her feet, and Lucina jumps, throwing herself forward towards the bank. She glances down and, for a moment, through the blue sheen of the frozen surface, she sees six red eyes crinkling in pleasure through the winter-kissed surface.

“Lucina!” Cynthia catches her arms as Lucina's legs break into the water, and a searing pain tears through them. Cynthia roars like a bear and hauls her out easily like she's twice Lucina's size, startling the taller girl. The ice splinters and shatters across the river, the current rushing past like a babble of laughter. But Lucina doesn't see the darkness anymore. 

Cynthia grabs her arm and pulls it across her shoulders. Lucina raises her eyebrow and takes a step forward. Her legs give out. 

Lucina shivers on the ground, snow clinging onto her wet clothing in tiny white clumps. “I can't feel my body. Everything feels numb.” Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and the words are slow in coming. Her breathing speeds up. Lucina can't get enough air. “Something's wrong.”

Cynthia yanks her forward. Her voice comes out high-pitched and fast. “Get up, Lucina! We'll get you help.”

Lucina nods, a lethargy pulling her down as she gets to her feet. She staggers against Cynthia as the frightened girl directs them towards a white buliding that blurs in Lucina's sight. The whispers rise again, and a headache stabs between her eyes. Lucina crumbles to her knees, the edge of her hearing ringed with the echoes of high pitched gibbering like the laughter of a loon. She grabs at her head while Cynthia wraps her arms around Lucina's chest and drags her forward. Lucina stumbles, footsteps a cacophonous mess against Cynthia's straight stride in the snow. The world's colours bleed out of her vision, leaving it grey, and Lucina doesn't know where she is, where they're going, nor why the door that Cynthia is struggling to open seems famliar. 

Cynthia swears and manages to turn the doorknob with her heavily gloved hand. The pair stumble through its wooden doors, teeth chattering as Lucina gazes at the soft light surroundings the pews and modest pulpit at the front of the room.

Cynthia bellows into the empty church. “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

Libra comes through the back door, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but claiming sanctuary in a church is a forgotten idea used to avoid being punished for a crim—” He stops and pales when he looks at thems. He rushes forward as Lucina collapses, nearly taking Cynthia with her. “What happened?”

Cynthia babbles, a high-pitched panicked gab as Lucina's hearing fuzzes out as if her ears grows stuffed with cotton. She feels strong arms hauling her and carrying her through the room into the back and into a small room with a clean cot. She blacks out and when she wakes again, she's bundled up in several layers of blankets with Libra's warm hand on her forehead while Cynthia's tear-streaked face pops up in her vision. Her wet clothing sits on a nearby chair, and Lucina wonders who pulled them off of her.

Libra murmurs. “You'll be okay, Lucina. You stopped shivering, and your heart rate's returned to normal.” He frowns and turns to Cynthia. There are deep bags under his eyes, and his cheeks thinner than Lucina recalls. “You said she was only in the water for a few seconds? Hypothermia shouldn't set in that fast.” He turns back to Lucina, studying her. "It almost seems accelerated." 

“She's been acting weird ever since we crossed the river! Like she was possessed or something.” Cynthia wipes at her eyes. “I called Dr. William.”

Lucina protests, a slow moan bubbling from her throat.

Cynthia glares. “By the way, I carried you out of the water, and you nearly died. You're welcome.” She jabs at Lucina's chest. “Hello? Hypothermia? This is kind of the point where we take you to the hospital.”

Lucina shakes her head and pushes herself up, wobbling as her mind spins. “I'm fine,” she croaks. She tilts her head, realizing that she can't hear the whispers any more. “I can head home.”

"Your aunt is on her way." Libra frowns. He pushes her back down. “Rest a little more. I'll get you something warm to drink.” 

When Libra leaves, Cynthia slaps a hot-water bottle to Lucina's chest. “Severa's dad said to give that to you when you woke up.” She crosses her arms. "Or you know. If."

Lucina wipes at her face. "Thank you, Cynthia. I'm sorry I scared you."

"You'd better be." Cynthia's scowl crumbles and her shoulders slump until she looks small and frightened. "We already lost two girls, who we'll never see again."

Lucina's breath catches, and the dizziness returns. "Severa's coming back." 

Cynthia hesitates. "It's been three months, and there...there was a lot of blood I heard at Noire's house—"

"It wasn't her. She's... she's fine. We'll find her." When Cynthia moves away, Lucina grabs her arm tightly. "She's coming back." Her voice hitches at the thought of the Grimleal finding her, stalking her and Lon'qu. Catching them. The laughter begins at the edge of her hearing. "She'll return home."

"Yeah." Cynthia doesn't meet Lucina's gaze. "Yeah. I'm sure she will."


	5. In Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucina continues to try to find a way to get to the book while her family and friends suggest she move on from Severa.

Aunt Lissa’s lips thin as she plops a shivering Lucina into her car and waves goodbye to Libra and Cynthia. The car pulls away with a quiet hum from the church, wipers fighting against the flurry of snowflakes.

Lucina burrows into the borrowed blankets, pulling them over her as if they could protect her from her aunt’s ire. When Aunt Lissa gets mad, she gets MAD. Like she-could-be-heard-across-the-town-mad. Like Lucina's-father-would-scramble-to-his-car-and-drive-away-as-fast-as-possible-mad whenever he saw her storming down the warpath towards him.

Aunt Lissa scowls. She squints into windscreen, peering past sunlight reflecting off of the snow. For a good ten minutes, they drive in silence before Aunt Lissa pulls up the empty driveway of Lucina’s house and turns off the engine. Lucina freezes, wondering if her aunt would let it slide and the trembling girl could slip out the car door when she sees Lissa draws in a huge breath.

Oh, no.

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? WHAT KIND OF GENIUS HOPS INTO A FROZEN RIVER IN THE DEAD OF WINTER?”

Lucina swears she hears the faint ringing of her hearing going. “I didn't completely fall in—” She cuts herself off at her aunt's glare and huddles into her blankets. “—technically speaking.”

“TECHNICALLY? TECHNICALLY, YOU'D BE DEAD IF YOU GOT TRAPPED IN THE CURRENT BELOW THE ICE!”

Lucina eyes her front door, noting with misery the fact that it remained closed with Lissa's yelling. It meant that no one was home. “Yes, I was foolish, and I risked not only my life but Cynthia's. Had the ice broken with both of us on it, we... we wouldn't be here right now.” She recalls her father's advice to apologize profusely when caught in the wrong. Very profusely. 

“I was reckless. I didn't consider how you and my parents would feel if you were to lose--” Lucina swallows. “—another member of the family. I was selfish and thoughtless. I'm not fit to follow in my father's footsteps. I'm not even fit to apologize to you in such a haphazard way. I must have worried you so much. I've done you such a disservice.”

Lissa protests, “I wouldn't go that far—”

Lucina shakes her head and sneezes. Lissa looks alarmed. “Aunt Lissa, I have a responsibility as the daughter of the Sheriff to lead by example in his stead. Getting both me and Cynthia nearly killed isn't something to be okay about, and I deserve every ounce of anger you have towards me. Especially given what happened to the children in our town.”

Lissa pinches the bridge of her nose. She looks like she has a headache. “You're doing the same thing Chrom does when I get mad at him.” She shakes her head. “Inside. Wash. Then, continue yelling.” 

After marching Lucina inside her own house, Aunt Lissa orders her to shower and change into clean, warm clothes. Lucina descends the stairs with dread in her pajamas to find two mugs of hot chocolate sitting on the living room table, steam wafting from inside the white ceramic containers. 

Lissa jabs at the seat beside her on the couch. After Lucina hesitantly sits down, Lissa frowns. “Okay, I've taken my anger out on your mother's tea kettle while I was making us drinks. If she asks about any extra dents, that was your dad.” She leans forward, examining Lucina's face. “I just wanna know what's going on with you that you think exploring the woods in winter is a good idea. Especially somewhere not too far away from where... 

“Let's start from something simple. How the heck did you get advanced hypothermia from being in the water for two seconds?”

Lucina explains how she convinced Cynthia to look in the forest for a book that Severa told her about. She mentions the headaches, the voices, and the map she took from her father. She hesitates about mentioning the creature she saw underwater. Cynthia said she didn't see anything at all. 

Lissa looks alarmed. “Okay, you got whatever your mom's got. You are NOT allowed to have black-outs on me.” Her expression shifts, and her voice goes serious. “Do you hear them now?”

“No, not since we got away from the river...and from the church.”

“Okay, so you were looking for some book that Severa Faulkner told you about before she disappeared in the hopes that it'll get the Emblem off of Chrom's back, and ended up hearing voices yourself?” She pauses. “It's not the worst idea in the world. You know, save for the part where you nearly DROWNED.”

“We were looking for the book that branded Owain. If we can get it, we can destroy it so no one else can get hurt or use it as a proof—”

“This book hurt Owain?” Aunt Lissa's voice is quiet. “Where is it?”

“Severa said in a cave near the river. I think we might have found it.” Lucina groans, “The entrance is small. Cynthia can probably crawl through but—“

Lissa looks at her, and Lucina feels her stomach turn at her expression. “I’m Cynthia’s size, aren’t I?”

Lucina feels something creep down her spine, something that tells her not to follow this line of conversation. “We weren't sure if it was the right one. It might just be a cave that leads nowhere.”

Lissa doesn't look convinced, but there's something about her gaze that unnerves Lucina. “Sure, let's not talk about it right now. What we could talk about are the secrets you're keeping from us!” 

She slams her mug onto the nearby table, teeth bared in a way that's reminiscent of an oncoming tigress. Lucina huddles against the side of the couch in defence. “If you're so worried about those creepy Emblem agents walking around, just say so! Your parents or I would help you out in a pinch!”

“They've got so much on their hands already!” Lucina protests. “I couldn't possibly burden them with—” 

“Making sure you're alive? Do you really think Chrom and Robin would want to hear that you died in a river?” Lissa stills. She goes quiet. “Like Owain?”

Lucina inhales sharply. “Aunt Lissa, it's not like—”

“Weren't you near the spot where Cordelia's girl found him?” Lissa meets Lucina's gaze. “Didn't she disappear too?”

Lucina struggles to breathe. It feels like the air's been knocked from her lungs. “Her name—”

“—is Severa Faulkner, town troublemaker and scapegoat.” Aunt Lissa eyes her. “And teen heartthrob, apparently.” She tips her head back as if studying her niece from a distance. “You loved her.”

“She's fine! She—” Aunt Lissa doesn't know. “—she's smart. She'll find a way back.”

“It's been three months, Lucina.” Lissa drops her eyes and wraps her arms around her knees. She looks so faraway. “When Owain disappeared, I thought he'd come back too. And when he did—when we found him—I felt like Naga betrayed me. She took him away, and I still don’t know why.” 

“Naga didn't take her—“ Lucina stops. But what if Naga did?

Lissa reaches out and squeezes Lucina's hand. “When it happened, people kept telling me that it was Naga's will, but I realized over time that they're wrong. I don't think Naga ever takes a child's life. After it'd happened, when I was driving down the road, I often saw a boy peddling on a bike ahead of me and got excited. I’d go up to him, hoping that maybe Owain finally came home but it was never him.”

Lissa’s voice goes soft. There's something in her eyes that make Lucina look away. “Nothing brings back those who died, Lucina. In the years after I lost Owain, I found that no matter how great my grief or deep the loss, the world does not stop for me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Lissa looks at her. “I've gone through the same journey, Lucina. I know what denial feels like, how the sadness feels like it'll never stop.” She shakes her head. “How the years past by while the person you love doesn't change, how they stay the same forever while you age because of what was stolen from them. How at times you feel like you're drowning in your grief. As a mother, I'd thought I would grieve forever.” Lissa shrugs. “So, imagine how I felt when I woke up one day and even that was taken from me.”

Lucina clutches at her mug, the liquid having gone lukewarm “What do you mean?”

“Everyone mourns differently. I had screamed at Naga, at my husband, at Chrom and Robin. I have written in countless books and journals. I even wandered up and down the river, hoping to see Owain popping out of the river, telling me it was all just a joke. Some days, I wanted someone to talk to. Other days, I just wanted to be left alone.” Lissa tilts her head, resting it upon one drawn-up knee. “So, imagine my surprise when one day I started to laugh again. And smile. And I realized that somehow, somewhere, I had moved on. But my son was still dead.” Lissa smiles sadly. “Isn't that so unfair?”

Lucina chokes, thinking of Owain and his bright smile the day before he disappeared—grinning mischievously at a scowling Severa, which had caused Lucina to frown at the pair, since she didn't like how Owain was looking at her. Lucina regrets ever thinking that of him. “He wouldn't have wanted you to mourn forever.”

“No, but a mother’s love never diminishes. Not even when her child is gone.” Lissa turns to gaze at her. “I don't expect yours would either, even when Severa is too.” 

Lucina rocks backwards as if she's been hit. She jolts forward a moment later, startling her aunt. “Severa isn't dead. I know there was a lot of blood where...where she was taken, but it wasn't hers!”

“Even if it wasn't...” Aunt Lissa's tone is gentle. It feels like a slap. “...how do you know after three months that she's alive or going to come back?”

“That's—“ Lucina blinks, feeling wetness in her eyes and something cracking her heart. “Even if she's halfway around the world, I know she's going to make her way back to...to Ylisse.” She hunches her shoulders to her ears. “Why are you bringing this up? Do you hate her? Blame her?”

“I never blamed Severa.” Lissa's gaze is hard. “She was much a victim in this as Owain was.”

Lucina hesitates. She remembers how Severa stopped going near Owain’s house after she found him in the river, despite how she used to come by to have Lissa dote on her. “I think she feels like you do. When you see her again—“

“I’ll let her know.” Her aunt clears her throat. “But Lucina, that was what I was trying to bring up. You should know that in Severa’s case, it might not be when but if. You're not responsible for waiting forever for her to come back. If she does. She wouldn't want you to grieve for the rest of your life either.”

“You make it sound like she's already dead.” Lucina makes a strangled sound. “Father did often say that responsibility is just responding to the ability given to you.”

Lissa scoffs, “If your father, the jerkface, wasn't so busy running his stupid department, he'd notice that his family is falling apart. Robin can barely function, and you're throwing yourself in rivers trying to get something that sounds like you should leave it alone. And where the heck is Morgan?” 

“And you keep trying to convince me to move on when there's no proof that Severa's—” Lucina can't finish the thought. “You're married to Uncle Frederick. If he died, could you go and love another so quickly?” 

Aunt Lissa looks away. “He didn't need to die.” 

“What?” Lucina thinks of her uncle and the day he stopped smiling. The nights Aunt Lissa started spending over at Dr. Roche's when the fighting between Lissa and Frederick got bad. The stories that start circulating around the two of them. “Do you still love him? Or is there someone else?”

Lissa gazes out the window across from them. “He’s my husband.” She doesn't say anything else.

Lucina trembles. “So, the rumours—”

Lissa glances at her. “Frederick knows.” When Lucina doesn’t say anything, Lissa's voice cracks. “He came up to me and said—”

“To leave her in order to stay with him?”

Lissa shakes her head. “That he doesn’t blame me, since his heart left when Owain did.”

Lucina grips the arm of the couch, fingers burrowing into the fabric. “You used to love each other. Doesn't that mean anything?”

Lissa smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. “If love alone could save people, then Owain would have never died.” 

Lucina doesn't say anything. Lissa checks her temperature once again and kisses her on the forehead before she leaves. Lucina sits on the couch until it's dark outside and her drink goes as cold as the world outside. 

She asks herself if love ends at death. She wonders if hers would.

  
\--  


The next day, the townspeople of Ylisse finds a single, solid crack along the entire river, stemming from where Lucina fell in. When the surface is tested, it shatters, cracks like spiderwebs exploding from the experimenter's feet as if they are stepping on thin glass instead of something six inches thick. The river is pronounced uncrossable by Lucina's father until the spring when the ice thaws. What most people don't understand is how an endless, black line appeared overnight and where it came from. Lucina and Cynthia don't say a word.

Lucina finds herself pacing before the unstable river days after she fell in, knowing that she'd have to travel for hours to find a point where she may possibly cross it. And even then, she may not be able to retrace her steps back to that specific rocky outcropping from a starting point so far away. The river ice breaking also draws the attention of the Special Investigations Unit, who bark questions at anyone who could answer about what is on the other side of the river. Luckily, they can't cross it either.

Their attempts at by-passing the river through a helicopter ended with the equipment failing immediately as it passed over the midpoint between the banks. The helicopter crashed through thick ice, its frame erupting in a spray of metal while its writhing pilots were swept away in the current beneath the ice. The Emblem haven't found their bodies yet, and everyone has given the river a wide berth since then.

Lucina stops and shakes her head. She knows that no one can search the other side until the spring, and she needs to be the first one to do so. But worrying about something she can't control is useless. She has to wait until the ice melts. 

She adjusts her scarf over her face and the bundle of washed blankets in her arms. She should technically still be at her house, since Robin grounded her for two weeks for nearly killing herself. Not that her mother has been paying much attention to the days passing with her migraines growing so bad that Robin has started getting black-outs from the pain—lapses in memories where she can't explain how she moved from place to place. To say Robin is worried is an understatement. She has gone as far as asking Aunt Lissa's opinions about being restrained to her bed in her sleep.

Lucina glances to her right and sees Libra's church a short distance away. A light shines through the window, and Lucina recalls seeing it there constantly in the nights after Severa left. She wonders if Libra ever goes home to sleep anymore. 

She finds herself plodding over in snow that reaches halfway up her calves. She shuffles the snow off of her head and shoulders as she pushes in the wooden door, slipping into the warmth and candle-lit glow of the church. She spots no one in the pews or near the head of the church, and cautiously heads through the back door that leads to a small kitchen where Libra sits at the tiny table where his head in his hands. 

He stirs, lifting his head to reveal reddened eyes and bags under them. He wipes at his face and stands up, the gauntness of his cheeks standing out in the daylight streaming behind him. “Lucina, what can I do for you? Are you feeling better?'

Lucina shuffles forward. “I'm fine. I just wanted to return these to you.” She holds out the blankets to him, which he gracefully accepts. “I'm actually supposed to be grounded, but I wanted to come here to see the river. And you.”

Libra furrows his brows. “It's not like you to disobey your parents.” 

“Neither is it like you to spend all of your nights here.” Lucina steps up to him, seeing the thinness in his face as if he's slowly disappearing. “Are you avoiding home?” Do you miss Severa too?

Lucina and Libra gaze at each other. The priest's lips quirk. “As observant as ever.” He heads out of the kitchen, and Lucina follows behind him as he crosses the front of the church and locks the doors. He returns and pops open a compartment in his pulpit that reveals a thick tome that smells faintly of smoke.

Lucina eyes the book. “Is that the one from Valm?”

“The very same.” He gestures for her to come with him as he places the book on the kitchen table before pulling across curtains the colour of clouds across the windows. “I've been studying it since we retrieved it. It's far older than anything I've seen, and the amount of history and mythology in it goes back to a point where they seem to blend.”

“Why haven't you given the book to my father or the Emblem? That would prove that the Grimleal threat is real.”

Libra looks at her. “Lucina, you are nearly an adult, and I will be candid with you. Your father and I suspect that proving the Grimleal's existence is the last priority for the Emblem agents here, and their first one is fix the blame on someone they can hang.”

Lucina recalls the gleam in the director's eyes when she spoke of capital punishment. “Do you mean metaphorically or literally?”

Libra runs a hand over his face. “They're looking at Cordelia, and your father suspects that the Emblem has been tampering or destroying evidence that disprove the case they're building against her.” He sighs and stares at the book. “That's why I haven't turned this book in. Not when it gives us a chance to understand what the Grimleal are after.”

Lucina inhales sharply. “But what about Mrs. Faulkner? How is she doing?”

Libra goes silent for a long moment. “She plays the part of a mother who's lost her child well.” He reaches out to open the book. His fingers tremble. “If only the grief was just an act.” 

Severa.

Lucina's throat tightens. “Have you heard from her?”

Libra shakes his head. “I last heard from Lon'qu about a month ago. He sent me a message about her training, and merely said, 'She survived.' It doesn't exactly put my mind at ease. I haven't heard from them since.” 

“Oh.” Something tightens in Lucina's chest. “Do you know when she's coming back?”

Libra doesn't meet her gaze. “Whenever it's safe for her to return.” He looks up, his voice going gentle. “Until then, you're welcome to wait for her here if you'd like. After your mother ungrounds you.”

Lucina thinks about his words as she makes her way back to her house, Libra having sent her back home in respect of Robin's punishment. She spots Cynthia's dad strolling from the front door, an empty bag stuffed into his pocket as he whistles down the driveway. When he notices Lucina, he smiles. “Hey, little Blue. How's it hanging?”

“Mr. Baxter. Were you just visiting my mom?”

Gaius hooks his thumbs into his belt loops. “Yup. Your mom looked pretty bad the other day, and I remembered that Tharja left a bunch of potions at her shop that I took a gander at before the Emblem confiscated everything. You know, since she trusted me with the key to her shop, I'd figured she'd be okay with me guarding some of her top-quality wares as well, you get what I'm saying?”

Lucina blinks. “You mean you stole them?”

“It ain't stealing if they were abandoned.” He leans in and lowers his voice. “And trust me, I was hiding them as best as I could so the Emblem wouldn't find them before I gave 'em to your mom.” He jerks his head towards the door. “Speaking of which, you two should chat. She mentioned looking for you, because you're grounded or something.”

Lucina's eyes widen. She sprints towards the door and slips in, glancing around the entrance for her mother storming her way. When nothing happens for a few seconds, she creeps along to the staircase to the second floor when Robin's voice rings out from the kitchen.

“Lucina? Can you come here please?”

Lucina eyes the stairway before sighing and heading to the kitchen. She straightens up as she spots a tired Robin sitting at the kitchen table. 

Her mother gestures for her to sit down. “I believe the last time we talked, you had understood that putting yourself and Cynthia in serious danger warranted punishment for bad decision making.” Robin sips at her coffee, and, despite her situation, Lucina's relieved at the colour in her cheek that's come back. At the side of her is a bottle of one of Tharja's potions, empty with its cap still off. “So, what do you feel is a fair consequence for not only breaking your promise and disappearing when you knew you were grounded, but for also not answering your phone or letting either your father and I know?”

Lucina blinks. “You called?” She checks her phone to see 13 missed calls. “Oh.” When did these happen? She's usually on top of those. “Sorry, Mother. I—I went back to the river. I wanted to see what its state was, and I stopped by the church to check on Severa's father. To ask if he's heard from her.” Lucina stares at her phone. She's disturbed that she doesn't remember any rings.

Robin's scowl softens. Worry flickers across her face. “It's been over three months.” She crosses her fingers together. “I often think about her too, about if there's was anything I could have done as one of her former teacher to change how things turned out.”

“Mother, you couldn't have done anything more.” Lucina's fingers clench. “It wasn't your fault.”

“But I could have predicted this,” Robin says, softly. “And I know the Emblem has been on your father to give them information to find her. He really knows as little as her whereabouts as they do.”

When Severa and Lon'qu disappeared, the remaining group agreed that staying silent about what happened would be the wisest approach until they assessed the Emblem's intentions. Robin quickly figured out what really happened within minutes of Chrom talking to her, and he ended up confiding everything that occurred. She has been searching for information about Severa and Lon'qu since. 

Robin plays with the cap at her side. “We'll have to trust that Agent Jin is careful in maneuvering them around the Grimleal.” She gazes up at Lucina. “I'm sorry that I don't know more about them.” She reaches out and squeezes Lucina's hand. “I know you cared for her, and you're holding on so well.”

Lucina doesn't look at her mother. Her throat constricts. “I saw Mr. Baxter as he left. He said he dropped off some potions that Tharja left behind?”

Robin nods. “I've already hidden the ones he's given me, but the man is a godsend. If I ration the migraine tonics out, I can extend their effects for two more months.” She stares down at her hands, empty and clenching. “And then, we need to figure out what to do. Perhaps, Miriel can replicate Tharja's creations. If she can't...” Robin shakes her head. She lifts her gaze. "I heard from Lissa that you've been having headaches too."

“Yes, ever since the trip to the river.” When Robin's eyebrows shoot up in alarm, Lucina continues, “They're not from falling in, but from searching for a book that Severa told me about before she left.” She bites her lip. “It's the book that cursed Owain.”

Robin frowns. “Start from the beginning.”

By the time Lucina finishes, Robin extends her hand. “Give the map to me, and I'll go look for it with your father when winter ends.”

Lucina shakes her head. Something tells her that it's a worse idea than Lucina searching for it herself. “Both you and Dad are under the constant watch of the Emblem. If you try to find it, they'll follow you and take it.”

“And it's better if you find it, given how you've reacted?” Robin peers into her daughter's face, gaze unwavering. “I know you want to do something, but sometimes, the best course of options is to wait for an opening to make a move. Promise me that you won't go back on your own, and that you'll trust this matter to your father and I?”

Lucina hesitates. “As long as the situation doesn't worsen. I promise.” 

“Good.” Her mother smiles faintly. “You're still grounded for earlier.” 

Robin ends up extending Lucina's punishment for another two weeks for breaking their agreement and lying. Although Lucina protested half-heartedly about the extension, some of the heaviness she felt lifted from her chest as she watched her mother bustling about the house and school, her sharpness of mind seeming to return to her.

The days bleed into weeks, and Severa still hasn't returned. When Lucina's released from the house at last, she makes her way to the church where she spends her evenings beside Libra, pouring over the tome they took from Valm. Libra begins leaving a mug of hot chocolate for her, still steaming as Lucina comes in from the cold, and she takes notes for the priest as he pours through ancient texts to decipher the words from the tome. Lucina only wishes that her own father is as present as Libra is.

The pair find out the name of Odo's deity, which was Devana—a primordial goddess of the hunt known for the fury of the wild in her. Salamander was the god of the afterlife who granted his powers to Vaflamme, including an immunity to harm from fire. Mila the Earth Goddess gave power to the Gáe Bolg, and was later slain by Naga's power in an event whose details are lost to history. 

Naga was the leader of all of the gods who participated in the Miracle of Darna, but her temples and her priestesses disappeared hundreds of years ago. Theories ranged from various scholar across the centuries that suggested anything from Naga going mad to Grima killing her. One stated Naga reincarnated herself and walked among humans, giving up her godly form to watch over her creatures. All of them held the assumption that Naga was gone.

Libra furrows his brows at the tome. “There needs to be more.” He flips back over the a whole section of the book to go back to the lineages obsessively traced in its pages. His finger runs down Heim's bloodlines, which dwindle down the years. “Are all the crusaders' families dying out?”

They don't find an answer.

Lucina arrives one day to find Libra in the spare bedroom with the back door to his kitchen open. She steps out into the snow and sees a dark figure chopping wood with Libra's axe. As she nears, she realizes she knows who it is.

Gerome stops at the call of her voice. He stands and hefts the silver axe across the shoulders of his black coat. He lifts the weapon as easily as a tennis racket, and with such deftness, it's like he was born to use it. 

Lucina stares at him, noting the snow caught in the reddish strands of his hair, how the curve of his jaw stands out distinctly. She shakes her head to clear her thoughts. “What are you doing here?”

Gerome studies her before speaking. “My mother sent me here to help the priest with some of his chores. She noticed that he hasn't been taking care of himself lately, and asked that I help out.” 

Lucina nods. “Your mother works with the Assistant Sheriff.”

Gerome shrugs and swings the axe to the ground. “Current Assistant Sheriff, though that may not be the case soon.” He heads into the shed nearby the back door and emerges without the axe. “Just rumours though.” 

Lucina grits her teeth. "Let's hope that's all they are." She turns and heads back into the kitchen with Gerome following behind her. They find Libra sitting at the kitchen table, scribbling on a sheet of paper.

Upon spotting them, he greets them with a fatigued smile. Libra turns to address the silent boy. “Thank you for your help, Gerome, but you can tell your mother that she doesn't have to send you over tomorrow as well.”

Gerome replies, "My mother says you should go home to your grieving wife, and stop using your church chores as an excuse.”

Libra flinches, his shoulders jutting up. “I see. If Cherche says that, I may have been more inattentive than I meant to be.” He stands up and pulls on his coat, his smile strained. “Perhaps, we shall all call it a night.” 

Gerome continues to meet Libra's gaze. It helps that he's nearly the same height. “I am to come over every day to help you with your chores until you can regularly go home.” 

Libra's eyebrow twitch. Lucina thinks that if he could, he would swear. "If that is what you wish."

The priest locks down the church, leaving it bare and dark for the first time that Lucina's seen it. He waves goodbye and trudges through the snow in the opposite direction of Lucina's house. When she turns to leave, she spots Gerome standing nearby with his hands in his pocket and a flush creeping up his neck.

"What is it?" 

Gerome stares into the snow. “Would you like me to walk you home?”

Lucina starts. She begins to decline his offer when she spots Gerome already hunching up like he's already defending himself. His eyes look so sad. "...if you would like to. My house is this way." She turns to head home, and Gerome follows.

Lucina glances at the boy beside her, tall and handsome with hardly a word to his history. Lucina can't help her curiosity. She pokes and prods him with her questions while Gerome answers in grunts whenever he can get away with it. Odd enough, he doesn't leave Lucina's side even when the inquiries get personal.

She finds out that Gerome dreams of being a pilot. He doesn't look at her when he relays why. “My father told me how my mother was an exceptional pilot, and she really came to life when she flew her ship in the air. When the war ended, she continued to fly as often as she could on the Minerva, but the military eventually decommissioned it. As a war aircraft, there was no war for it to fight, and it was left to rust in an unknown bunker somewhere.

“My mother still dreams of flying Minerva, and she talks about her dreams of soaring above people, above clouds—beholden to no one but herself.” 

Lucina's voice is gentle. “Do you want to carry on your mother's dream for her?”

Gerome whips away. His nose goes pink, and a flush spreads outwards across his face. “Nothing so romantic,” he barks.

Lucina smiles. She's not fooled. “You're sweet at heart.” Like another redhead she knows. Her smile slips from her face at the thought of her. “You pretend you don't care, but the truth is you care so much.” She's not sure if she's talking to Gerome or the memory in her head. “I just wished you were more honest with yourself.” 

Gerome takes the comment in silence until they reach Lucina's front door. She glances over to him. There's a brooding in his eyes, the set of his jaw that said he's suffered too much. She looks at him and is reminded of Severa.

Gerome doesn't move from her front door step. He gazes at her with something in his eyes that makes Lucina grits her teeth and turn away. “You've been suffering so much since that attack months ago.” He clears his throat. "Was it true that you and that Faulkner girl were involved?"

"Her name is Severa. And the answer is yes." Lucina grits her teeth and turns away. "Good night, Gerome."

"Wait. Please let me speak." He steps up to her, searching her face. "I worry for you. You've been restless, and your grades have been slipping."

Lucina eyes him. "You've been watching me a lot." She turns to face him, and she's hit with his scent—a warm sandalwood that reminds her of a field of wildflowers. "What are you doing?"

"Being more honest with myself, like you asked." His breath catches as he meets her gaze. "If you want to wait for her, I understand, but there are others here who care for you, who wait just as patiently for you to look at them like you look at someone else so far away. How long will you wait to see if she will come back? Months? Years? A lifetime?

“You may not know what happened to her. You may never. In that event, perhaps, you should consider moving on. Find another love.” Gerome doesn't look at her. His hands are shaking. “After all, isn't she just another girl?”

Lucina exhales, recalling Severa's breath on her lips in the library and the sad smile on her face when she said goodbye. She thinks of the pink wildflower given to her years ago, fresh and young and pure before wilting into a dying grey. She thinks of Severa driving down that hot summer road for absolutely no reason but to see if Lucina is all right, her mad sprints across the soccer field under Cordelia's barking, and the smirk on her face when she saw Lucina dressed in the outfits picked out for her. 

Lucina stares into the east where she last saw a sad, one-eyed Severa ride away from her. She continues gazing into the distance, not even looking at Gerome. “No. She's not just another girl. She never really was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _In Memory_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> A thousand times we needed you  
> A thousand times we cried  
> If love alone could have saved you  
> you never would have died  
> A heart of gold stopped beating  
> two twinkling eyes closed to rest  
> God broke our hearts to prove he only took the best  
> never a day goes by that you're not in my heart and my soul.  
> -Kimberly N. Chastain


	6. The Road Not Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severa searches into rumours of the Mystletainn--another legendary weapon--and trails a group of Grimleal. It's too bad she doesn't leave when she should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a long time in coming, and I apologize for the wait. I kept putting it off, because it was a difficult chapter to write and I have not prioritize my time around my writing lately. Definitely on me, and I hope you guys still hanging in there are engrossed in this chapter.
> 
> Warning: there will be sadness. Also, I totally took inspiration from the manga "To You, the Immortal." I don't own any characters from it.

Severa stays out of sight as the cloaked convoy moves through the woods. She pulls her white cap over her hair, tucking loose strands underneath to ensure no red could be seen before trailing the party, keeping behind the trees and brush.

The figures ahead wade through snow up to their knees, gloved hands pulling their coats tighter to them while they mutter bitterly about the cold. A patch of white lines drawn in the shape of a weeping eye sits on their woollen shoulders. Severa grits her teeth at their brazenness. They're not even trying to hide themselves anymore.

A pair of cloaked members stop up ahead, and Severa slips quickly besides them to see what stopped their progress. She spots someone pulling a weapon out of a beaten and scratched scabbard, and Severa inhales sharply. 

A dull, ancient-looking sword sits in the hand of a woman with short red hair. Severa frowns, wondering why she has it out when the Grimleal member marches towards a fallen tree trunk across their path. The woman swipes the sword through the wood lengthwise, the blade slicing easily as if it were softened butter. The slash suddenly accelerates, the blade gleaming and seeming to grow sharper with the movement. The blade exits the other side of the log without any resistance. The woman kicks off the top half of the fallen tree, and it thuds against the ground with a heavy crunch. Her weapon glints in the sunlight before dulling into a lifeless reflection of the snow around it. Severa almost wonders if the sword is alive.

The woman lifts up her weapon to the group and smirks. “Do you doubt my bloodline still? The Mistletainn begs otherwise.”

A passing member grumbles, “We get it, Annie. Your stupid sword is awesome.”

Annie scowls and waves her blade around threateningly before tucking it back into an old scabbard by her side. “Wait until you see me use this on someone. You’ll fear me then.”

She turns her head slightly, and Severa catches a glimpse of a oval mark on her cheek before the woman marches ahead. 

Severa takes in a breath, mentally confirming the sword's name and the fact that she could return to Lon'qu now with her report of the legendary weapon. She tenses when she spots two new figures with one being dragged forward by their arms, a black hood on their head that's obscuring their face. They're being yanked forward with rope tied around their hands, arms thin and nearly gangly, shoulders slender as the figure stumbles and lets out a high-pitched grunt. The other sits inside a cage, shivering against a huge beast that looks at least part wolf as it heaves on its side, red stains across the white fur of its ribs. The smaller figure is more fragile, a frightened speck huddled into the dying animal. She couldn’t be older than seven, eight, tops.

Severa watches the Grimleal march them away, the cage rattling all the while. She stays where she is, knowing that she has enough to return to Lon’qu. All she has to do is confirm that the Grimleal had a sword that carves through steel and armour, and her scouting mission would be completed. Maybe he might help them. Maybe they might be gone by the time she gets back with him.

She finds herself following them, stopping when she finds herself in the middle of two snow-covered paths. One leads backwards to Lon’qu and where they arranged to meet. One goes farther into the woods, dead trees crowding the path like stagnant guardians stuck in time.

Severa turns and surveys the other path, eyes tracing its line in the horizon. They widen when she realizes the path leads back to Ylisse. She takes a step forward and then one back, staring as something in her chest tightens, and she almost feels drawn to go home. To go back to warmth and family and Lucina and Noire—

Her hands clench. Noire isn't there anymore. And Lucina nor her family can never be safe if she goes back. Not with her as she is right now.

She takes one last glance towards Ylisse before turning and going down the darkened path, past the frozen trees and deeper into the woods. Lon’qu told her just to scout and come back.

But how could Severa let this go?

She creeps down the path, sticking close behind the trees as she runs over several strategies in her head like Lon'qu taught her. If spotted, she would have to kill everyone to avoid news getting out about her or potential retribution. Lon'qu read her several lessons in Chon'sin's history where raiding tribes killed the women and children after defeating the men to prevent the possibility of revenge. Several more merciful tribes had been completely destroyed when the grown-up children of their enemies led an army of 1000 strong into their lands. But Severa isn't a general or an agent like Lon'qu. She could simply neutralize the guards and get the captives out, but knowing Severa's luck, she'll probably get into a fight.

She comes across a cluster of abandoned huts, snow weighing down their roofs while the buildings sit across a stretch of land, a broken cobbled road between them. With the amount of distance between the huts, Severa estimates that a guard would not be able to arrive quickly if one were to shout, since the buildings look sparsely dotted along their path. She waits in the shadow of a large tree, looking down the hill where the village sits, nestled at the bottom. She frowns at the lack of guards patrolling the outside, which should be implemented considering the layout of the terrain. The fact that they had none either meant that they are utterly confident that they would not be discovered or it's a trap, which is not going to be an issue with Severa since she's just going to slip in and out.

She creeps closer to the village's entrance where two guards stand, looking bored while they gripe about the snow. About ten minutes later, another pair comes out and relieves them, who slap their comrades on the back in thanks. 

When the pair have walked beyond the hill further back and out of sight, the new guards turn to look behind them, and Severa’s off like a shot. She races down the hill as the two turn, only to see her vault between them, her blades slipping across their throats. They snatch at empty air when she passes before clutching at their necks and collapsing, gurgling. Severa doesn’t look back as she races down into the village, slowing as the top of another hut comes into view. 

She keeps to the woods alongside a path that weaves between a collection of rickety, wooden shelters—some of their roofs broken with snow drifting down through the holes. A broken fence stands to one side of her, its stakes missing or lying on the ground, the sharpened heads dulled by weather and time.

Severa creeps to the nearest building, back against the wall as she slides along it. She spots two hooded figures grumbling and stamping their boots outside a faded hut with stained wood, its foundations looking like they're sinking into the snow. The two guards glance the other way, and Severa takes a breath. Before they look back, she's already in front of them, jamming her knee into the stomach of a guard as she doubles over and collapses. The other guard raises his gun, but Severa launches herself over, her dagger slicing through the cloth and flesh of his elbow as the man screams, and she smashes the heel of her palm upwards into his chin, ignoring the jolt that runs down her arm from the impact. Blood spurts from the man's mouth as he collapses backwards onto the ground. He spits out something bloody and meaty, and stares at it, bright crimson against the snow. Severa's boot snaps into the side of his head before he makes a sound, and the man falls backwards, silent. The other guard clutches her stomach and crawls away, wide tracks in the snow behind her. Severa comes up to her and kicks her onto her back, her boot coming down hard on a bared throat as the woman gurgles, eyes bulging as her fingers scrabbled at the unfeeling leather. After a few long seconds, the scrabbling weakens and the woman's eyes rolls back into her head. Severa continues the pressure for another couple of moments before carefully lifting her foot. The woman doesn't move. 

Severa lets out a breath, and glances at the dilapidated structure behind her, some of its wooden planks on the ground, uncovered beneath Severa's footsteps. The colour is a faded greyish brown, its colour drained by the sun. Severa checks around the building, carefully peering around the corners before slowly pushing the door open. 

Inside are several large boxes covered by tarps and blanket with holes eaten into them by moths. Dust covers the wooden floor with a single line of drag marks and footprints disturbing the gray layer while wooden bows hang from rusted hooks in the walls. Near the centre of the room is a thin girl lying on her side with a dark hood on her face and her hands tied behind her. Severa quickly checks to see if there are any windows or other doors around, and when she's satisfied there are none, she creeps to the centre of the room, closing the door shut behind her. 

The girl stiffens as Severa approaches, keeping clear of her legs in case she decides to kick. Making her way around, Severa leans forward and pulls the hood off to find a girl her age with dark wavy hair and a black eye on the left side of her face. Scratches line her cheeks and forehead, but the girl glares at Severa. She looks like if she could, she’d snap at Severa’s arm like a wolf.

Severa holds out her hands, weapon still in one hand. “I’m here to rescue you.”

The girl eyes her dubiously, gaze lingering on the blood on Severa’s dagger. Severa awkwardly wipes the blade on a nearby piece of cloth and re-sheathes it. “I’m just going to cut you free, I swear.” When the girl shifts as if to kick her. Severa snaps, “Do you want get free or not?”

After a long pause and stare, the girl turns to expose the rope binding her wrists behind her back, though she keeps her gaze on her. Severa kneels forward and deftly slips the blade through the rope, the bindings falling free to scatter on the ground.

The girl rubs at her wrists briefly before yanking down the gag around her mouth. She glares. “Leona.”

Severa starts. “What?”

“My name is Leona. Might as well know the name of the girl you’re rescuing, yes?” She rolls her shoulders and stretches out her arms. “You make a habit of saving damsels in distress?”

Severa snorts, “You’re no damsel. They’re supposed to be noble.”

“Ouch. You hardly know me, and we’re already fighting like a married couple.” The girl crouches low, stretching out her legs. “I’ll have you know that I’m the most able archer in my villager.” She stands up, and Severa notes how long and lanky her limbs are, the spill of dark hair tied behind her while the girl’s sharp eyes flit around the shelter, looking for something. Severa notices that she’s very pretty. Or maybe Severa is just very lonely. 

The girl gestures to the doorway and slowly creeps towards it, making no sounds with her steps. An experienced hunter. “What’s your name?”

Severa frowns, not sure if she should answer.

Leona stops and listens at the door. She cocks her head at Severa. “Silent and brooding, huh? You’re probably a heart-breaker back home, aren’t you?”

“We don’t have time to mess around!” Severa snaps, refusing to think of Lucina. She shuffles to the other side of the door. “If you want to keep your ass intact, we need to get you out.”

“So much for silent,” Leona mutters. She studies Severa. “Why are you even doing this? What’s in it for you?”

“Are you usually so cynical?”

Leona snorts, “Last time I wasn’t, we got kidnapped. I kind of learned my lesson.”

Fair point.

Severa gazes out the window and thinks of another dark-haired girl she knew dearly in Ylisse--a friend who could never return home because of her. “Even screw-ups are allowed a try at redeeming themselves as best as they can, aren’t they?” She turns her face away and moves towards the exit.

Leona grabs Severa by the shoulder as the latter peers through the doorway. She lets go quickly when Severa tenses. “I can’t leave. They have my sister.”

“Typical,” Severa mutters. When do her ideas actually go according to plan? “Where are they keeping her?”

“I don’t know.” Leona grits her teeth. “They dragged me into a hut first to—“ Her eyes harden, and her face twists in anger.

Severa reels back in realization, and her stomach feels sick. “Oh, gods.”

“I didn’t let them,” Leona spits. “I fought them the entire time.” She turns her face to highlight the bruise around one eye, the skin swollen and dark. “That’s how I got this.”

Severa sits back on her heels, something hot sinking in her stomach like a burning stone. “We can pay them back.”

Leona shakes her head. “I just want to find my sister and get out.” She picks up a dusty bow and quiver of wooden arrows hanging from the wall. “This should help somewhat.”

“You any good with those?” Severa pulls out some throwing knives from a pouch on her thigh, counting them under her breath. “Just have to ask if we need to fight.” When the girl doesn't respond, Severa glances up to see her giving the redhead a strange look. “What?”

Leona coughs and turns her gaze away. “Nothing.” There's a faint flush of pink on her cheeks. “You just seemed really...attractive for a moment.”

Severa rolls her eyes. “You need better lines.” She pushes open the door slowly and peers out, seeing no one. She sighs in relief. “And better timing.”

Leona eyes her, sidling closer. “Does that mean you might be interested in a more... convenient time?”

“I'm taken,” Severa replies, tonelessly. She makes to move when she sees a couple of cloaked figures trekking up a far hill. She freezes and swears softly.

Leona hums, having snuck up behind her and peers over Severa’s shoulder while the latter reflexively tenses. “Forgive me, but I don't see a ring underneath your gloves.”

Severa glares. “Really?”

Leona shrugs. “Just pointing out the obvious.”

Severa ignores her, eyeing the patrol until they disappear into the forest beyond, dead branches jutting into the air like a copse of frozen skeletons. She shakes the image from her head. "You barely met me, and yet you already trust me enough to flirt?"

“Well, you're clearly not Grimleal unless you're a particularly stupid Grimleal who let their captive go free.” Leona leans up against Severa, who starts at how warm she is at her back. Or perhaps, it’s Severa who got so cold. “You know, I heard that there's a monastery hidden up in the mountains somewhere that helps people hone their mental and physical training—”

“Do you usually talk so much?” Severa snaps.

“Only the times when it looks like we might die,” Leona replies, cheerfully. “So, how was your walk here?”

Severa glares. “Just tell me where they're keeping your sister.”

As it turns out, Leona has no clue. Apparently, marching around with a hood on her head did little for her sense of direction.

The girls slip out of the building, creeping along the snow-covered path towards the centre of the abandoned village. Severa keeps glancing around, unease prickling below her skin when she doesn’t see any guards coming over the snowy hill. Someone should have come and checked on these buildings on the far reaches by now. The guards on the ground haven't moved from where Severa left them. Leona's eyes narrow at the sight of them, but she doesn't ask any questions.

They keep to the crumbling wooden shelters, ducking behind the fading wood and peering ahead. They see no one along the hilly path, and Severa feels her hair on her nape rise. Something's wrong, and they need to flee. But Leona moves forward, glancing into the windows for a sign of her sister, and Severa can't leave her like this.

When the silence leaves both of them alert and tense, Leona begins whispering, gaze sharp. “Marche, Fushi, and I were making our rounds around our home when this group of weirdos in hoods came around the hill near our village. They had some weird rusted sword with them that they fished from a family tomb in the next village over, and this woman just comes up and starts slicing through everything like it’s not there. Well, our dog and I managed to fight through a few of them but they hit him with bullets and the old spears they found underground. The spears had some leftover belladonna poison on them from long ago, and Fushi collapsed. When they recognized him, they realized who was with him, and took us all along with them.”

Severa pauses. She doesn’t know where to start asking, but she might as well confirm what Lon’qu had requested her to check.“Were they looking for the Mystletainn?” 

Leona shrugs. “That’s what they called it. Frankly, I was more concerned about the poisoned spears they took out of the crypt. Fushi usually shakes off weapons easily, but the poison on the tips kept him down. Belladonna’s common around our parts, and you really don’t want to get hit with that.”

Poisoned spears? Severa’s day always goes so well. “What happens when you do?”

“Heart palpitations, shaking, hallucinations, the works. By the time you reach convulsions and falling into a coma, you’re pretty much dead.”

Joy.

Severa opens her mouth to ask more questions, but Leona moves ahead, her stride fast as she quickly glances in passing windows. After the fourth abandoned hut, the sun sets, pulling a trail of darkness behind it as it drowns below the horizon. Severa glances over to Leona who shivers hard in her thin, tattered, and dirty jacket before the redhead slips off her outer coat and offers it to the other girl. “Your teeth chattering will give us away.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Leona dryly remarks as she takes the white garment. “Where did you learn your people skills from?”

Lon'qu. 

Severa turns to scan the horizon. “I don't see any more guards.”

Leona snorts. “I'm not surprised. They're pretty arrogant about how well they can take down intruders just because they have—” She glances into the hut’s windows, and her eyes widen. She darts around the corner while Severa swears and chases after her as she catches a glimpse of white bolting past a rickety door that’s hanging off of its hinges.

Severa grabs her throwing knives and dashes into the room to find a huge cage standing in the middle of the broken wooden flooring, fragmented planks from the rotting roof littering the ground while snow drifts down through the holes above. There are crates and boxes covered with a tarp that looks disgusting and covered with a film of mold. Leona stands right at the cage, gripping the bars.

A young girl who stands as high as Severa’s hip whimpers inside the cage as she wipes at her eyes. Beside her, a huge beast of a dog lies on its side, heaving as the girl grasps at the stained fur on its ribs where rusty spears jut upwards, impaling the dog to the ground.

Leona hisses, “They really hurt Fushi.”

“Fushi?”

“Our dog.”

Severa starts. “That’s a dog?”

The girl dives at them, arms reaching through the bars while something in Leona’s expression breaks. She rushes forward and embraces her sister through the gaps, murmuring low enough that Severa can’t hear the words.

Severa steps away to give them space and figure out a way to open the cage. There’s a fraying rope tied to the top of the cage, leading to a lever and a crank of bluish-white metal that comes up to Severa’s chest. A set of wheels sit on top of it with the cage rope threaded through the gears, and Severa is going to take a lucky guess that lifting the lever would raise the cage. “I think I’ve found something.”

Leona doesn’t hear. She grabs at the bars and strains backwards, nearly popping out her shoulders trying to yank them out.

Severa snorts, fiddling with the switch. “We'll get it open. Don't lose your head.” She grunts as she ducks under the long metal rod and heaves it onto her shoulder, pushing up with her legs and knees like she’s trying to heave a heavy box onto a high shelf. The switch creaks and groans, resisting all the way to the top where it clicks into place, and the machine beside her grumbles as the crank pulls the rope through its wheel.

The cage lifts slowly, and Leona nearly falls backwards in surprise. The moment it rises enough for her to dart underneath, she ducks under the metal bottom and crushes her sister to her, who cries out in words that Severa can’t hear. The cage lifts to the top, swinging unsteadily on thin rope, and Severa just wants to get them out of this building as fast as possible. She glances over to the other side of the crank and spots a wooden box that comes up to her waist. She shoves and pushes the box to a spot underneath the metal edge, so if the rope breaks, the cage might stop on it--might being a tentative word as Severa eyes its rotting boards.

She steps towards the centre where Leona wipes off her sister’s cheeks with the palm of her hand. She stops near the heaving beast about the size of a horse. “What do we do about him?”

Leona glances up with the young girl runs out from her embrace and jabs at the spears. “We have to get those out! They’re hurting him!”

From the side of the dog juts out three spears taller than Severa with something metal on the shaft like teeth. Severa looks at the jagged metal on the handle and at her gloves. She picks up a dirty strip of cloth and wraps it around her hands before pulling at the spear in Fushi's side, hissing as she drags the weapon out. She pulls out two and drops them, the wooden weapons clattering on the ground while Severa clenches her hands, blood running from her palms onto the floor before the trickle slows to a drip. 

Leona spots the blood spreading on Severa's gloves. She grabs them in alarm. “Your gloves are shredded!”

Severa yanks back her hands. “It's fine. I heal fast.” She examines the tears in her gloves, watching the skin underneath knit itself together until the cuts smooth away as if her hands were never injured.

Leona gapes. “What are you?”

Severa drops her eyes. “Just unlucky.” She grabs the last spear and with a grunt, yanks it out like she's pulling along a stubborn animal. The weapon pops out, and Severa stumbles backwards. She watches as the wolf lies still for several moments before rising slowly to its feet, wisps of steam escaping from the wounds on its side. The puckers of flesh and blood shrink, white fur growing over the holes until the spear marks disappear, and the wolf tosses back its head, chest out.

Severa stares. Was that dog a relative of hers or something?

When the wounds vanish, the wolf sniffs into the young girl's ear, who grabs at its front legs and chest. “Fushi! I'm so glad you're okay.”

Fushi huffs, twin plumes of steam wafting from his nostrils as he shakes out his fur, whipping the girls backwards with the force of his motion. Once done, he licks the young girl’s face before padding over to Leona and doing the same thing. Fushi turns his head and stares at her, watching her with something in its eyes that reminds Severa of being studied by Robin whenever she was in the principal's office. The hair on her nape stiffens. 

Severa turns away. Her voice is brusque. “What’s with the giant dog?”

Leona strokes Fushi’s muzzle, which comes up to her shoulder. “He’s said to be immortal and the former companion of Ulir. He's also guardian of all of her descendants. You know, the ones with unprecedented luck.”

Severa pauses. “Your ancestor is Ulir?”

Leona shakes her head. “Not me. Marche.” She picks up the protesting girl and gently places her on the dog’s back, who lies down to make the task easier. “I’m her stepsister, but that doesn’t make us any less family. I tend to be unlucky.”

No shit given how Severa found her. “Your luck sucks.”

“Really?” Leona’s eyes flicker over Severa, and she smiles. “I think it was pretty good this time.”

The cage creaks ominously overhead, and Severa eyes the rope. “Maybe we should all get out of here first.” She leads them out, glancing around the landscape where a light dusting of snowfall gathers in their steps. Night falls on the village, and Severa blinks, seeing the lines of the buildings and trees as clear as if she were in daytime. She slips out and waves for them to follow once she clears the perimeter of the building, feeling the hair stiffen all over her body though she doesn’t know why.

Fushi barely clears the doorway with Marche lying low on his back while Leona follows behind, glancing around her with her bow in her hands. They move a little ways towards the village entrance, stopping by the hut where Severa frees Leona. “This is a good place to part.” She stands there with her hands jammed into her pocket while they stare. “See you.” 

Leona scowls. She strides up and jabs Severa in the chest, who snarls. “That’s it? You’re crappy at goodbyes.”

“What do you want me to do?” Severa huffs, cheeks warm. She’s going to attribute that to the cold. “It’s not like we’re heading the same way.”

Marche glances over and firms her mouth into a determined line. She grabs Severa's shoulder, her grip light despite her squeezing hard. “You should come with us! They'll help you like you helped us.”

Leona gently pulls Marche's hand away from a squirming Severa. “What she means is that the villagers at our home might be able to help you with whatever it is you're doing.” She peers at her. “So, what are you doing besides rescuing people in need?”

Severa glances away. “Just trying to get home.”

The sisters smile. Marche happily claps her hands along Fushi's neck. “We are too! We should be friends.”

Leona grins at Severa who refuses to meet her eyes. “I think we are already.”

Marche leans forward. “Come with us! We’ll help you!”

Leona stops stroking Fushi’s fur and turns to Severa. “She’s right. Our village would happily ally with you in stopping the Grimleal, especially considering what they did to Marche and I.” She hesitates, and pink creeps into her cheeks. “And I would like to reward you as well.”

In what way? Severa contemplates their offers. Allies would be good, and a warm bed would be nice. And Severa doesn't know when or if she'll see Lucina again, but she can't afford to get distracted. Maybe...

Severa looks over to the building and tenses, an instinct blaring in alarm. The bodies she left there are gone. She grabs Leona's collar to yank her down. Both girls hit the ground as bullets bite into the snow around them, and Fushi yelps, jolting forward while Marche shouts and looks back. Fushi glances back too, and Leona hollers at him.

“Get out of here, Fushi! Take Marche back home! I'll follow you guys.”

Fushi gazes at them before turning back ahead and leaping through the woods while Marche looks back over her shoulder, reaching backwards for her sister and yelling. They shrink into a fleeing figure in seconds and Severa curses, hauling Leona up 

A line of hooded figures skid down the snowy hills, leaving trails of white puff behind them as several of them surround the girls, the black metal of their pistols gleaming into their heavy gloves.

Severa glances around. Her voice goes low. “You should have gone.”

Leona keeps her gaze around them, shuffling until she stands back-to-back with Severa. “What can I say? I make bad decisions to impress pretty women.” 

Severa pulls out her daggers. “We both don't have to die...but thanks, anyway.”

A man with dark hair and a scar down his cheek sneers and begins to reach for his gun. Severa feels her heartbeat slow as she controls her breath, the downward motion of the man's arm diminishing to a lazy drift as if he's moving through water instead of air. She doesn't have the same restriction.

Severa grabs several throwing knives from a pouch on her belt and hurls one at the man before throwing the rest at his compatriots behind him. She's in his face as his brow languidly furrows in confusion at the blade in his chest before Severa slashes him across the throat. She ducks under his arm and stabs the man behind him in the stomach before the first one realizes that he's dying. Her breath heaves as the hooded woman besides her jumps away, her movements growing faster as Severa loses control of her powers. It doesn't save her life as Severa dashes past her and slices through the woman's torso when she clears her side. 

Severa glances back to the middle where Leona's expression slowly moves towards shock and the redhead curses. She bolts back to Leona and drags the other girl towards the broken remnants of a cabin wall as she loses her breath and time goes back to normal.

Leona blinks. “What just happened?”

Severa huffs. “I just eliminated three people. You're too slow.” 

"In the dark?" Leona eyes Severa, who pants. “And yet, you’re already out of shape.” She picks up the bow beside her, and Severa can’t help the scoff that escapes. “What? Don’t think my bow is enough?” A corner of Leona’s mouth quirks up. “Watch me.”

She raises the tip of the bow past the top of the barricade and a hail of bullet smash overhead and into the snow in front of them. When the shots stop, Leona’s up with several arrows in her fingers and firing with rapid, swift motions before dropping down again as someone screams and bullets rain again. She grins at Severa. “Got two. I used to hunt at night sometimes.” 

Severa grits her teeth. “Great. Now, get the other ones.”

Leona checks over her shoulder and shrugs. “There’s more than twenty out there. It’s your turn.”

Severa swears as something catches her attention at the corner of her eye. A hooded figure creeps around the edge of building corner, and she whips out her mother’s pistol and hits him as he brings his rifle up. He keels over, a cone of red sprayed out behind him as he stares blankly out of one eye, the other an empty tunnel where Severa shot through it.

“Gods. Who the hell are you?” Leona hisses.

Severa counts the remaining bullets in her gun and pats her jacket pocket for the spare two clips. She doesn’t know if it’s enough. “Just an idiot playing hero.” She turns to Leona. “You need to run.”

“Well, duh. If you haven’t noticed, we’re trying to find a way to—”

“Not us. You.”

Leona turns her head away from around the barrier. She looks at Severa. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a dead one if you stay here.” Severa crouches, inhaling slowly to steel herself. She ignores the faint tremble in her legs, the inevitable condition of using her Odo blood more than once. She's never used it more than twice and doesn't know what would happen. “Go back to your sister. I’ll handle this.” 

Leona eyes her. “Someone with a ‘I-need-to-save-everyone’ complex like you? You’re just looking to get yourself killed.”

“Look who’s talking!” Severa snaps. “You—”

Movement catches Severa’s gaze, and she swivels, firing off a hail of bullets as two men duck behind the corner of a hut beside them. “We need to keep moving.”

“I don’t know. I was getting fond of our sitting duck strategy.” 

Severa glares. She opens her mouth when she spots a dozen hooded figures rushing up the hill towards them, and her blood chills. She leans forward, gun held in front of her, despite the shaking of her hand. “I’m going to rush them. When I do, get out of here as fast as possible.” 

Leona stares. “Have you done that slow-time thing a lot?”

Severa’s off. She slows her breath, feeling a strange strain on her muscles as if a great force is yanking them behind her as her heartbeat spirals, a crazy pace that has Severa feeling each beat in her torso like it’s her last. 

She goes on anyway.

Severa sprints out from under the barricade, watching the shooting figures slowly change direction of their firing, bullets lazily zooming behind her as they trail behind her path. She raises her gun and fires off a handful of shots as several members duck behind the houses. But not fast enough.

They scream, mouths twisting open for the lucky ones who get hit in their arms or legs. The ones who sustain a hit in their torso stand still for a moment before collapsing, a slow-motion folding of their body as they tilt backwards on the ground. 

Severa’s breath catches in her ribs, her throat. She coughs, and time slips from her as the figures’ motions speed up in a jerk and they fire at her, a bullet grazing her cheek like a slender trail of white-hot pain. Severa curses and stumbles behind a dilapidated house, back against the wood as she switches out her cartridge in her gun. Her fingers shake. She doesn’t recall this much strain the last time she trained in high-speed with Lon’qu.

She gulps in several gasps of air before forcing her heart to slow down a third time as she checks around the corner for an opening and takes one as the hooded forces regroup. Her heartbeat jackhammers in her ears, her throat, her fingers. A tremble runs down her body as her breath gets shorter, ragged—harder to control as if someone is squeezing out the air in her lungs. A pain throbs up her neck into her head, and it feels like her pulse is trying to break out of her skull. She fires again, taking out two people with shots through the nose as they collapse. The third one hits the top of a nearby roof, causing a harmless cascade of snow as the hooded members rush her, growing faster as Severa feels her control slipping, pain running down from her fingertips to her shoulder to her heart like a nerve jammed with electricity.

One’s within leaping distance of her, a wicked blade the size of his forearm in his hand, and he tenses, hood falling back from his snarling face, blonde hair streaming back. He's barely older than her.

An arrow hits his chest, and the boy recoils, howling as he paws at the arrow while another joins his shoulder and his lung. He collapses as his colleague lifts his pistol and fires at Leona, who dashes along to the next house, firing arrows as she runs, looking impossibly cool. She gets ambushed by the house as a pile of hooded men leap on her, and Severa crumples to the ground, knees and legs ignoring her commands to keep herself up.

“I told you to run,” Severa mutters face-down into the snow. “Dumbass.” 

She hears the soft crunch of boots against the snow as someone approaches her cautiously, and her limbs are leaden with fatigue. A hand grabs her shoulder, and Severa’s flipped onto her back, breath slapped out of her by the impact with the snow. A gleaming gun is pointed at her face, held by a man with dark hair and furious eyes. “Tell us who you, and we promise that we’ll kill you quickly. If you play stupid, we will not be fast.”

Severa coughs, “Selena from Nohr.” She recalls the name briefly from a geography lesson in 7th grade. 

“The same Nohr that was demolished in a battle with Hoshido 3000 years ago?”

Damn, the man knew his history.

He growls and tightens his grip on the trigger. “I warned you.”

A hand from another hooded member pushes away his arm, and the man snarl. The newcomer turns to Severa. A woman with thin, gaunt cheeks and beady eyes squints at her. “Wait, you look like that bitch from 20 years ago. The one who shot a bunch of us down.”

“You mean the Devil of the Break?” The man grabs Severa’s shoulder and yanks her closer to him while the redhead hisses. “You’re related, aren’t you? Her spawn.”

The woman smile, thin lips stretching from ear to ear, though her eyes never change. “Well, I think I know a way to send a message to the Devil.”

Severa’s spine goes cold, and she twists on the ground to run when her arms are yanked forward by several other members. They haul her towards somewhere in the distance. She hears Leona shouting nearby as the sounds of something heavy being dragged sounds out behind her.

Two men pull her through the snow by her hair with Severa sputtering and turning her face away from the ground to avoid her cheeks being scraped raw. Her scalp burns where her hair is being yanked, and Severa grabs at her strands, clenching a fist around the hair to reduce the pain.

When the men stop, they hurl her down a hill where Severa skids down patchy ice towards a bonfire built into the centre of a huge tractor tire. Broken planks from the nearby houses feed it while several men grab her and hold her down. A band of black-cloaked figure stoke the flames, tongues of red and yellow licking at the dark sky. Leona’s thrown down beside her a moment later, the dark-haired girl tumbling to a stop not far away and leapt upon by more hooded members.

The Grimleal crowd around the girls, smiles stretched widely from ear to ear. One boy pokes at a fire, an ominous, black smoke rising from it as two others grab and drag Leona further out, who kicks out at them while a girl slaps her across the face. “You denied these men some fun earlier. Time to make it up.” They haul her to a spot a little ways off.

“Leave her alone!” Severa lunges up, but is kicked back down in the shoulder by a nearby man. 

The man sneers and yanks her up slightly by her hair while Severa grits her teeth. She recognizes him as the man with the pistol. “Sweetheart, you should be worrying about yourself. That fire’s not there for nothing, y’know.” 

“Wha—”

A boy with a black plastic can throws a yellow liquid from inside at her fingers, and Severa flinches back as the smell hits her: gasoline. 

The man holding her hair squints into the trees surrounding the hills. “It’s a shame Annie and her brother went to check the perimeter. Maybe we should wait until she’s back. She’d enjoy this.” He glances down at Severa and smiles. “Nothing like a burning for a girl who wants to play hero.” He grins at the boy with the gasoline, and white-hot fear arcs through Severa’s body before the man turns back to her. “Think it’s a clear enough message for your mom?”

She glances at the crowd huddling near the fire, fury alight in the shadows of their faces while more than a few look back on their fallen comrades with expressions twisted with grief and pain. In the distance, Leona’s shouts are muffled, and there are thudding sounds like something striking flesh that has Severa’s stomach turning over itself. The boy with the gas can dangles it in front of her, and Severa notices that the can is in perfect alignment with the fire as a desperate plan knits itself together in her mind.

Severa knows she heals quickly, but she's not sure how well she would survive being set on fire. Under any other circumstance, she would prefer not to test it. 

She tenses as she eyes the gasoline before screwing her face up in fear. “Please! I was just ordered to! I don’t know anything more than my mission!”

The crowd jeers at her, delighted at the terror on her face even if only part of it is real. Severa digs her heels into the snow as she’s dragged closer to the fire, the redhead tossing and clawing at the ground to get away while someone stomps on her fingers, and she hisses.

She’s hauled so close to the fire that she sweats from the heat, like sticking her face into a burning oven. The boy swings the can, nearly tipping it over her before hauling it back with a grin. Severa could stab him in the eye.

The members pack closer around her while a couple loosen their grip on her as Severa pretends to snivel and whimper on the ground, recalling the time she accidentally broke Brady’s violin as inspiration. She’s held down by a woman with forearms like steel while the man takes the gasoline from the boy. He lifts the can slowly towards her in a taunting gesture when Severa suddenly twists out of her single captor’s grasp and slams a blade into her instep. The woman screams, and the others step forward to grab her but Severa darts forward. The man steps back, his eyes widening. Severa ignores him.

She slides to the side and boots the can of gasoline into a high arch over the spectators who freeze in place as their eyes track the flight of the container. Turning, she throws herself as far away from the frozen crowd as possible, covering her face with her arms. 

The gasoline lands in the fire with a clank. 

Severa’s thrown backwards at the explosion, tumbling and hitting the ground with a cough as heat and pain sear through her face and hands. The fire reaches out everywhere like the claws of a furious beast with screaming members darting away, the flames eating at their backs and cloaks as they dive into the snow. The roar of the explosion rings in her ears, her hearing fading in and out. Some of the members don't get up, and Severa almost retches at a smell like roasting pork coming from around her. Those caught in the closest range of the fire lay still in the snow, blackened and unmoving while flames dance along their robes. The ones that manage to run away end up collapsing a few seconds later and weakly moan as they try to drag themselves to help.

Severa coughs, feeling the skin swell and blister on her arms where the fire ate through the fabric. Severa weakly rolls to put out the remaining flames. Through the singed holes, she sees blackened patches of skin peeling away, the flesh stinging and almost melting, and Severa turns her face away, suppressing a spasm that creeps up her throat.

Not far from her, a mop of dark hair rises from the snow, and Severa spots the captured archer raising herself on trembling forearms. Leona glances up and stares. “You're still alive? Are you immortal or something?”

Severa groans, feeling her nerves scream as the burns shrink. New skin creep onto her limbs and face, leaving a strange, numb feeling in their wake and tender, red flesh. “I told you I heal fast.”

“What was that?”

Severa inhales shallowly, breathing hurting. The inside of her lungs are like ovens left on. “Improvisation.”

“That was intentional?” Leona coughs, turning her burned cheek into the snow and sighing in relief. “Your plans suck.”

Severa laughs before she rasps in alarm. A Grimleal woman with red hair and a rusty sword by her side storms through the snow behind Leona with a teenaged boy by her side. Leona glances over and instantly tries to crawl away, hissing at the burns on her arms. She gets up on her knees when the woman reaches her and yanks back Leona’s head by the hair, sword to her throat. The steel gleams once, and Severa’s stomach drops to her feet when she recognizes the Mystletainn and the woman as someone called Annie.

Severa fights to get to her feet, stumbling back down when her burns split open, spilling drops of blood across swollen skin as Leona glances at her, fear bright in her eyes. 

The sword swings.

Leona’s face contorts, and Severa screams as the blade slips into her neck, sliding through the flesh and bone in a single sweep like they aren't even there. Her body falls forward while the woman drops her head off to the side, hair and blood tumbling on the snow until the head stops face-down not far from Severa. She could reach out and touch it with her hand.

Annie sneers and wipes at her face, spitting out blood. “Now, you see the power of—“

Severa’s already in front of her, blade in the woman’s stomach and driving the dagger upwards as she bisects her. The woman screams and stumble back while Severa drags her other knife across her throat, not bothering to make it clean. The woman gurgles and swipes clumsily at Severa while the latter side-steps and kicks her to the ground.

The boy. screams, throwing himself at Severa. She steps to the side and kicks into his ribs, hearing a thud from her boot as he whimpers and crumples to the ground. 

Weak. Just like her.

She pulls out a dagger hidden in her boot as she approaches him, and he struggles to drag himself back, leaving wide track marks in the thick snow. His hood falls back, and Severa freezes when she sees a young, round face with soft features—a boy not much older than Morgan. In her hesitation, he snatches something out of his pocket and jams it into Severa's thigh as she screams. She slaps his hand away and slams her palm into his nose, feeling the cartilage crunch beneath it through the vibration up her arm, and the boy collapses into the snow, the snow stained pink beneath him.

He grabs at his nose, blood spilling over his gloves. “Why did you do this? Why did you hurt us?”

Severa clenches her blade, a tremor running through her body. “You don’t get to cry after what everything you guys did.”

“What did she do to you? She’s only following the call of Grima!”

“She killed my… my friend,” Severa heaves, a burning spreading through her lungs like wildfire in her chest. “I paid back the favour. She should have picked a better god to serve,”

He howls, “She’s my sister!” 

“She was someone’s sister too!” Severa roars, pointing behind her at Leona or what’s left of her. Something twinges in Severa’s mind-—an uneasiness that reminds her how similar to Morgan this boy is and of Lucina, and her stomach wrenches. A weight like stone settles in her chest. “What justified your sister to murder someone who couldn’t fight back? Naga would have never asked that.

The boy snarls, eyes squinting through the blood running down his face. “Naga was never real! She was a story told to sway people from the truth that Grima created the world and he’s the only god,” he spits, and Severa should kill him so he couldn’t go back to the rest but he’s not much younger than her.

“What makes you think She even exists now?” he growls. “

Severa’s brain switches off. “Shut up!” She kicks him in the stomach, and he doubles over, wheezing. “Gods, all you Grimleals yak about the same thing!”

He looks up. “Grima is going to save us. Unlike her.” He glances at Leona’s body behind her. “Did Naga help you save your friend? Or did She let her die like you did?”

Severa's boot crunches into his ribs as she feels something snap, and he crumbles, yelping. She kicks him again, and his head whips back. He doesn't get up, and Severa wheezes, yanking out what looks like a needle from her thigh. She hurls it to the side and limps over to the red-haired woman on the ground who clutches at her stomach, sleeves and gloves bloody, as if that alone would stop everything from spilling out more. Severa looks at her, and her stomach twists harder. Something niggles in her mind, and she wonders what she’s even doing. She grabs the rusty sword from the ground, lips curling back from the blood on its blade. The sword seems to hum before the blood slips off completely as if the weapon has never been used. The woman reaches out towards Severa as if asking for mercy from her slow death.

Severa walks away.

She glances at Leona’s head lying face-down on the ground and something vile and sour rises up her throat, a retch that never comes. She grabs the top of the head, keeping it as far from her body as possible, and walks over to Leona’s body, depositing it on the ground. Severa never turns it around.

Grabbing burning planks of wood from nearby, she stacks them on Leona, the flames creeping towards her clothes, burning the blood stained white jacket Severa lent her. They set her alight. Severa coughs and gags, pulling her shirt collar up to cover her nose as her breath catches, tightens. Turning towards the mountains, she inhales sharply as the darkness of the sky bleeds downwards into the crags in front of her, a dribbling ink sliding onto the white snow, and Severa stumbles backwards as she gawks at the melting sky. A scream rises behind her, and Severa whips around, seeing nothing but dying flames littered in pockets on the pink and white snow, the outlines of the huts ominous like hulking giants. 

There's a terrible dryness in her mouth, a soreness in her throat that makes speaking feel like she’s scraping her vocal cords against a rasp. Her vision blurs, and she blinks, lines and colours blending into one another. Shadows of figures with far too many limbs to be human creep and whisper behind the trees, lengthening and growing. Her heartbeat rabbits out her chest, deafening in her ears with the finality of each beat. A memory of a broken needle flashes in her mind, and she whirls towards the collapsed boy with the broken nose. What did he inject her with?

Severa feels something that stops her movements, like she’s dying, a heavy sadness that she can’t begin to explain. An emptiness opens up in her like a pocket sucking in her feelings, her dreams, her wishes, her hopes. She glances behind her, and the feeling flees. She sees Leona’s body push itself up, flesh blackened and charred, scraps of skin around the hole of her neck as it wavers on its feet. It steps towards her.

She bolts towards the trees.

Severa pants, stumbling into darkness as her vision blurs shapes and shadows grow and twist like vines wrapping together. In the distance, Severa hears the clop of something heavy approaching her, a shadow that reaches to the top of the barren trees, and fear drops into her stomach--a cold, freezing sensation that gripes her mind. She flees like a wild horse, eyes rolling back into her head as she crashes through frozen bushes, the faint shuffling of someone she used to know behind her.

Like always, Severa runs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Road Not Taken_ by Robert Frost
> 
> Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,  
> And sorry I could not travel both  
> And be one traveler, long I stood  
> And looked down one as far as I could  
> To where it bent in the undergrowth;
> 
> Then took the other, as just as fair,  
> And having perhaps the better claim,  
> Because it was grassy and wanted wear;  
> Though as for that the passing there  
> Had worn them really about the same,
> 
> And both that morning equally lay  
> In leaves no step had trodden black.  
> Oh, I kept the first for another day!  
> Yet knowing how way leads on to way,  
> I doubted if I should ever come back.
> 
> I shall be telling this with a sigh  
> Somewhere ages and ages hence:  
> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  
> I took the one less traveled by,  
> And that has made all the difference.


	7. If You Forget Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severa finds herself high up in the mountains, wondering if Naga is real and why she doesn't help. She doesn't quite find the answer to her question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news: I'm not dead. Better news: I have uploaded a new chapter. Thank you everyone for your patience, and I hope you've had an awesome start to your year!

Severa doesn’t know where she’s going.

The shadows and slow clomping follow her into the night and the day where Severa whips around at every rustle she hears. She climbs madly. Fingers pull at desperate footholds, and her shoulders burn as she hauls herself, pausing only when she realizes her fingertips are bleeding and she’s leaving a trail of blood. She can’t remember when that happened.

Severa turns to look below her, and all she sees is either fog or a low-lying cloud. A cliff face stretches before her, grey and jutting with ridges and sparse, stubborn trees sticking out of the stone. 

She keeps climbing, fire running like rivers under her skin, stumbling over flat ledges that she usually clears. She reaches a plateau and sprints through the snow, leaving messy boot prints behind. The cliff walls are relentless, endless as she twists around tight turns. Behind her, she hears the slow clomping of a heavy warhorse approaching her, and what it’ll do once it reaches her makes her stomach twist and her legs move faster. 

The air grows thinner. She passes by broken stone walls hidden in the crags of the mountain and strange cobbled paths, something heavy and long bouncing on her back. A sword, perhaps, but she can't recall how it got there. Day bleeds into night, and a red rash spreads up from her punctured thigh to her stomach, her breathing growing ragged as it creeps up towards her heart. 

Severa reaches a grey set of stairs unevenly cut into the mountain, and she climbs. Snow drifts by her in lazy flutters as she smears blood with each grasp of the narrow cliff walls around her. Night passes again, and she clambers onto a plateau where a heavy stone gate stands as if in greeting, a strange character embossed in a faded gold sign. She passes through the gate, darting underneath a line of brass bells as large as her head. They stretch across the gap between two thick, red pillars. Her boots slap against the ground as she traces a narrow path between two mountain faces and stumbles onto a stone temple, heavy with snow and age, greyness matting the building. She bolts up the stairs, slipping on a patch of ice and banging a knee that she doesn't even feel. She scrambles underneath an ancient archway and forces open the heavy wooden doors in front of her, which groan loudly as if they haven’t been used in ages.

Severa stumbles through the moss-ridden doors of the church to the horrified expressions of the monks inside, dressed in bright shades of yellow and orange. She whispers through a parched throat, “Sanctuary,” before promptly passing out on the floor.

When she wakes, she blinks at the ceiling of a small cell with a narrow, rectangular window high above her spilling sunlight across the stones below. Severa groans, grabbing at her forehead where a headache is blossoming and feeling cool cloth beneath her fingers. She pulls off a damp towel and pushes herself up, her vision wavering as lines and shapes flicker in and out. Her throat feels dry and rough like it’s lined with sand. Beside her sits a bare wooden stand with a metal jug of water and a single glass. Severa swats at the slender container, her movement clumsy and leaden, knocking it off the stand and shattering it against the floor. She stares at the splinters and shards, a tightness in her chest rising as Severa thrashes to get up, her motions wild and panicked. 

The cell door swings open, and Severa snarls at the figure who steps in. He frowns at her, his hair a little shaggier and longer than when she last saw him but his expression as stern as ever. 

“Calm down.” Lon’qu reaches out to her metal jug and pauses. He eyes the broken glass on the ground before exiting and quickly returning with a wooden cup. “Drink.” He pours water into the cup and holds it up to her face. Severa protests when liquid sloshes into her mouth, and she drains the water quickly in one gulp. Lon’qu gazes at her before pouring her three more cups in succession. 

Severa slumps against the cold wall of her cell. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t report back within a day, and I went looking for you.” Lon’qu studies her, his fiancée’s jade necklace nestled on his chest. “You went missing for a week.” 

Severa laughs, a short rasp that turns into a cough. “It feels like a lifetime.”

Lon’qu doesn’t say anything. He removes a leather bag from his side and takes out several burnt throwing knives and a familiar silver pistol. “You left these at the camp. That was careless.”

“I was a little preoccupied with being poisoned! Sorry about almost dying!” Severa snaps. 

Lon'qu studies her for several long minutes. “I have never seen anyone fail a simple scouting mission as spectacularly as you did.”

Severa lies back down and rolls over. Lon’qu’s empathy is legendary. “Go away.”

“No.”

“What part of ‘leave’ did you not get?”

Severa hears Lon’qu take a step towards her. “What part of ‘I’m not going to let you drown in your own self-pity’ did you not understand?” 

Severa doesn’t answer.

“What happened on the mission?”

She stiffens. “Don’t you already know?”

His steps move away from her, and she glances over her shoulder to look at him. Lon’qu squints into the sunlight pouring into the cell. “You have such potential. But you refuse to use it.” He turns towards her. “I’ll be outside when you finish moping.”

He closes the door behind him, and Severa should have thrown something at him. She huffs and buries her face into her pillow.

Days pass, and Severa watches the sunlight creep across the floor, its highest point just before her bed before it retreats back across the stones. It does this dance everyday, promising warmth but never quite reaching her. Her hair grows matted and tangled, her skin gritty in a way that has her shuddering, and she swears she sees tiny black spiders pouring out of the cracks in the ceiling.

At some point, a monk comes through the door with a thick tome in his hands and a nervous expression on his face.

Seveta scowls as she lies on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. “What do you want?”

The young monk clears his throat. “The head monk suggested that your spirit might be renewed with the reading of Naga’s teachings.” He flips to the beginning of the tome, fumbling with the pages. “In the beginning, there was darkness—“

“I know how the Book of Naga goes.” Severa glares at the stones above her. “I was the daughter of a priest after all.” 

The man nearly drops his book. “Then, surely you know that we can replenish our minds by focusing on the words of Naga in our minds—“

“‘The words of Naga are alive and active, sharper and hotter than any double-edged sword from the forge. They cut through to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow come together. They judge the desires and thoughts of the heart. They cleanse and purify the stained soul, and before the eyes of Naga, they verify the worth of one’s life,” Severa sighs. “Thracians 4:12.” At the monk’s shocked expression, she scowls. “Oh, shut up.”

“No! I wasn’t doubting you! You truly do know Naga’s words, but—“ He tilts his head. “—I don’t understand why you do not say them with your heart. Do you not believe that Naga will save you?”

"She didn't save—" Thoughts of a silver sword and a hand yanking back dark hair slip across her mind. Severa swallows and turns her face away. “Naga had so many chances to save people, and yet she was absent.”

“You must not blame Naga! She—“ The monk stops, hesitant.

“What? What stupid secrets are you guys hiding up here? Was there never a Naga? Is she some fantasy of a deluded fool?”

“Naga was real.”

Severa sits up. “Was? Do you know something I don't?”

"This is a holy site of Naga and holds more stories than most." The monk shifts. “Naga, our saviour, gave us her wisdom, her spirit, and her body once she banished Grima to the Old World. We have made many great things from Naga, such as swords to bless and guide us and water horns carved from her tooth that are said to quench and refresh any thirst—”

“Her body? Is Naga dead?”

The monk stammers, “Naga gave her life to serve us and guide us, and in exchange, we turned her physical body into relics and—”

“So, Naga’s dead.” Severa rolls over, turning her back to him. “Thanks.”

She closes her eyes as the man protests and panicked to reads random passages from the tome, which Severa ignores. After an hour, she hears the faint shuffling of shoes headed towards her door. A thought hits her, and she calls out to the young monk. “Wait, can you do something about the spiders?” She points to a corner where a nest of them crawl over each other in a swarm.

The monk follows her finger before giving her a strange look. “There—there aren’t any.” 

He closes the door. She’s left with her thoughts and the straining sunlight that never reaches her. 

She realizes how funny her perspective feels, like it’s been tilted, as if the world she knows has been set an angle and she can’t do a thing to stop it from sliding. It’s as if she’s on a downward ride she can’t stop.

Severa lays in her bed, watching the sunlight creep across the stone floor towards her from the narrow window above her. But it always stop short of her bed. Not that it would matter. Severa always feels cold and like there is a big hole growing in her chest—a pervasive numbness that bleeds the world grey. It feels like she can’t stop it no matter what she does.

There’s a rustle outside of her door, and she knows Lon’qu is stubborn enough to plant himself there. Severa sniffs and turns around on the bed, burrowing herself as close to the cold wall as possible.

Sunlight passes and moonlight replaces it. Severa loses count of how many times this cycle repeats. She doesn’t know how long Lon’qu will wait, but she imagines he could wait forever for her.

The monks finally have enough of their standoff and force their way into Severa’s room, pushing an angry redhead into the pools to bathe while admonishing Lon’qu to shave since he’s scaring the other inhabitants with his beard.

Severa’s hauled off by a pair of female monks who wrinkle their noses the entire way down the hall. They take a moment to rip the clothes off of a snarling Severa before throwing her into a large basin made of porcelain and filled to the brim with steaming water. She surfaces, spluttering while a middle-aged matron with a thin line for a mouth grabs her by the shoulders, dunking and scrubbing her like she’s a piece of laundry. 

At Severa’s protests, the matron replies, “You had the chance to wash yourself.”

When Severa is cleaned to her satisfaction, she yanks the redhead out of the bath and shoves her a waiting towel held by two female monks. They dry and dress her with the force of prison wardens, and Severa is dragged down another stone corridor to the dining hall—a huge open room where dozens of the monks wander about with meals on thin trays. Severa scowls at the bright orange paint and the bare wooden tables. She glowers at the bowls of rice and stir-fried leafy vegetables placed in front of her and tries to ignore the rumbling in her stomach. 

Severa bolts them down. The surrounding monks stare at her and the dishes on the a tray placed in front of her. The cross matron folds her arms across her ample chest. “You’re starving.”

Severa would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t busy stuffing some kind of noodles fried with cabbage and mushrooms into her mouth. The matron sighs and slides over a second tray before signalling to the monks to continue eating. Severa’s stomach cramps when she finishes, but she feels satisfied in a way she hasn’t felt for a while. She slumps back, sighing. When she spots the matron waiting with an expectant look, she turns her face away. “Thanks.”

The matron inclines her head before briskly whipping the bowls away and dragging Severa down another corridor and into a bare stone room where a disgruntled Lon’qu sits on a wooden chair in front of a basin and mirror. He rubs at his chin and jaw, scowling at the dark patches of scuff floating in the ceramic container, a straight razor in one hand. There are tiny droplets of blood along his jawline. 

“You missed a spot.” Severa taps on her own jaw while Lon’qu grunts and eyes the razor warily. She turns to the matron. “What happens now?”

“You will see the head monk.” The matron tucks her hands into her wide sleeves. “He will go over the rules of conduct here at the temple. There have been reports of shouting coming from your room when the monks are practicing chanting.”

“They shouldn’t be doing it for two hours at six in the morning,” Severa mutters.

“Regardless, there are expectations of courtesy from visitors, and if you wish to stay here, you would be wise to heed them.” The matron heads towards a wooden door at the back. “I will take you to him right now.” She cracks open the door, and both Lon’qu and Severa shiver as a swirl of snow blows in. “Bring your coats.”

The matron leads them down a walkway between two towers. Severa peers out through the slots in the stone on both sides of her. On one side is the courtyard and the walls of the temple where men in orange robes train in neat lines near the frozen fountains. On the other is the side of the mountain itself, a blank canvas of snow along rocky ridges and bunches of branches white with frost as snow falls away. Beyond that is a fog that smothers the bottom, and Severa can’t see anything beyond that. 

Lon’qu grunts as he heads through an entrance with a carved arch, and Severa starts, not realizing that they had already reached another building. Inside is a cavernous hallway with golden statues lined up at the left side of the room with sticks of incense burning in clay pots beside them. The matron holds the door open ahead of them, gesturing impatiently, and they are ushered into a cozy study, plied with cushions, books, and a gently steaming teapot on top of a dark, wooden table. On the far wall is a long, curved sword in a black lacquered scabbard and held up by wooden holders. The owner of it all stands up and greets them, dressed in orange and yellow like the other monks.

The matron says, “This is Musashi, our honourable head monk.”

The head monk is a clean-shaven man with a warm smile and a bald head. The crow’s feet at the edge of his eyes is the only thing that gives away his age. “Welcome, my friends. Thank you for meeting me.”

Severa grumbles under her breath while Lon’qu elbows her. He says, “It was our honour.”

The head monk peers at the two of them. “Are you two father and daughter? Or lovers?”

Lon'qu and Severa shudder at the thought. “No,” both chorus.

He smiles. “Just checking.”

Lon’qu places a hand on Severa’s shoulder who shrugs it away. “She’s my.... apprentice.” 

The monk inquires, “In what trade?”

Being emotionally stunted.

“Weaponry and martial arts.” Lon’qu glances at the bookshelf behind the monk. “I heard your monastery is famous for them in addition to your philosophical studies and austere lifestyle.”

Severa has never heard so many words with more than two syllables come out of Lon’qu’s mouth.

The monk smiles. “You would like to see how we train, correct?” He peers at Severa and frowns, eyes flicking over the bags under her eyes and something else. “You look like you could use an examination first.”

The monk exchanges glances with the matron who snorts. She bustles over to Severa and yanks her over to a wooden chair by itself. “I’ll take a look at her.”

Severa starts to protest but is cut off by the matron checking her temperature and breathing with a stethoscope that she’s not sure how monks on a mountain acquire. When matron notices, she scowls. “We actually have supplies. How’d you think we got the antidote for the poisoning you had?”

Severa winches when the cold surface of the stethoscope lands on her back. “What poisoned me?”

“The belladonna plant. Nasty stuff. Six small berries can kill a child.” She grabs a small flashlight from somewhere and shines it into Severa’s eye. “Your pupils aren’t dilated anymore, which is a good sign. How did you even get that in you in the first place? Belladonna only grows in Western Chon’sin in small, secluded forests and villages.”

Severa sharply glances at Lon’qu who nods. He waits. Severa doesn’t look at him.

Lon’qu uncrosses his arms. “She was on a classified mission for the Emblem. I’m under their authorization. But you already figured that out.”

The matron stops her ministrations to stare at him. The head monk smiles gently. “I see.” He turns to Severa. “Would you mind telling us what happened?”

“Wait.” Severa scrambles over her memories—the abandoned village, the captives, the fight, the Mistletainn—“Did you guys find a sword on me?”

Musashi studies her. “We did.” He inclines his head towards Lon’qu. “We already showed it to your master.”

“He’s not my—”

“Severa, I have it.” Lon’qu’s eyes flicker over her. “Tell them what happened to you. Physically.”

Severa slouches on the chair. She listlessly describes the headaches she felt, the pain crawling up her neck from trying to use her bloodline.

Lon’qu leans in, tense. “I’ve never heard of that. What could that be the result of?”

The matron snorts, “She had a heart attack fighting is what it sounds like.”

Lon’qu stare, flabbergasted. He clears his throat. “But she would have a numb left arm—”

“Heart attack symptoms are different for each gender.” At his and the head monk’s silence, she scoffs, “Men.” She turns away from the pair and concludes her examination of Severa. “Severe PTSD with symptoms of depression. Are you thinking of killing yourself?”

Severa starts while Lon’qu whips his head towards her. “No.”

“Good. Have to check. My recommendation is to see a good doctor and counsellor, mediated with excellent self-care and learning to let go and forgive what’s happened in the past.”

“You were supposed to examine me physically,” Severa protests.

“It doesn’t take a close study to see when someone is suffering.” The matron turns away and busies herself with pouring them all cups of tea. “When life leaves a deep mark, you see it in their face.” She serves the tea briskly to each of them before trotting out the room. Severa struggles for a comeback even as she watches the door swing close.

The head monk smiles. “You made an impression on her, Severa. It’s not often that she cares enough about others to be so bold and blunt.”

Wonderful. Severa feels so cared for.

Lon’qu sips at his tea. He perks. “This is excellent. Where did you get this?”

“It’s homegrown in our gardens. I can point it out on our tour today.”

Severa frowns. “Tour?”

“Yes.” The head monk places his empty teacup down. “I realized that we haven’t had a chance to introduce ourselves properly. It’s best for us to get started so you know who we are.” 

Severa scoffs and turns away. She stares at the snowflakes drifting outside the window as the monk and Lon’qu continue to talk about the stupid tea and the stupid monk and the stupid reason why Severa might have arrived in the first place.

There’s heat in her eyes, and she blinks, startled to find them wet when the men stand up, having finished their discussion. The head monk passes them both coats made of a thick, long fur and heads out the door with Lon’qu in tow. Severa stays where she is before she slowly follows.

They head down a tower of stairs, an agonizing spiral that takes far too long to reach the bottom in Severa’s opinion. The head monk pushes open the door, leading them into a garden with high stone walls and a bundle of greenery in the centre, surrounded by two wooden paths. 

Lon’qu immediately leans in to inspect a plant with short, round leaves near them. “Is this it?”

Severa rolls her eyes as the monk nods and begins an explanation of how they grow it. Great, they’re still talking about freaking tea.

She huffs and stamps her feet, glancing around the gardens. She squints at a pointed glass ceiling with slabs of snow on it.

On the far wall is a mural of a tall figure with a halo of light around her head. In front of her is a dragon as black as night, and Severa frowns, something about its lines sliding in and out of her vision that catches her attention. Further along the wall are paintings of fire with people in the red sparks, and Severa feels like a spider crawled down her spine. Why would a temple have that?

Musashi comes over, darting a glance between the wall and Severa’s gaze. “One of our guests from long ago painted that as a gift to us.”

“Why would you want that?” Severa twists her body away.

Musashi examines the wall, his expression distant. “The man carried great and uncommon knowledge and great and uncommon guilt. His stories and beliefs added to our own, and this—“ The monk touches a part of the wall where a woman wraps herself around her child while both are in flames. “—represents the things he regretted.” He glances at her out of the corner of her eye. “Many people don’t believe or know what the Grimleal did to some of Chon’sin’s villages during the war. They called themselves the Old Believers and purged many people from the rural areas through fire baptisms.” He inclines his head toward Lon’qu who doesn’t turn around. “I believe your master would know firsthand.”

“He’s not my master,” Severa mutters, glancing at Lon’qu who keeps his gaze on the tea plants. “That’s horrible.”

The monk studies her. “As horrible as what made you come here?”

“That’s—“ Severa turns away. She follows Lon’qu as the latter exits down a walkway out of the gardens. She starts to follow when Musashi taps her on the shoulder and points to a tree with oval-shaped leaves and tiny, round green fruit. It stands in a patch of dirt of its own, far from the other plants.

“That’s the manchineel tree from across the ocean to the south. We used it on you to cure you.” He holds a hand to stop her when she takes a step toward it. “It’s also the most toxic tree on the mountain. Eating the fruit is fatal, and even standing under its leaves during a rainstorm can blister your skin from the water. In one way, it’s dangerous. In another way, it can save a life.”

Severa frowns. “Is that supposed to mean something more?”

He smiles. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He strides after Lon’qu while Severa stares after him.

Stupid monks and their mysticism.

Musashi leads them out of the courtyard and down a stone path into the forest, a single guardrail made of thin wood stopping them from falling off of the mountain. They walk in silence, and Severa stares at the unflappable monk. She glances to the side. “Your trainees are pretty certain that Naga is dead.”

“Yes, though I understand that isn’t a common belief in the world outside the monastery. Given our studies of history with records not available to most, we can determinedly say that any writings of Naga disappeared centuries ago though we cannot say why...” Musashi turns his head towards her. “My honest belief is that Naga is alive among us.”

Severa scowls. “You mean she lives on in us.” Corny. “That’s great.”

“What do you think happened to her? After the war?”

Severa crosses her arms and stares out into the woods, silent with a layer of snow resting on thin branches and bushes. “She left us.” She shrugs one shoulder. “To our own devices.”

“Perhaps.” The monk shrugs. “The people who seek us search for guidance that only Naga’s wisdom can give. We’re known for being near the Pool of Reflection where warriors and senior abbots go to face themselves.”

Severa scoffs. “Melodramatic.” She scowls when Lon’qu glares at her.

“We are one of Naga’s holy sites. In this part of the world, the divide between the worlds is very thin. Often, when we walk through the mountains, we encounter spirits in the shape of beasts, and our more conflicted monks have gone to the pool to collect themselves. Sometimes, a persistent visitor stubborn enough to climb the mountain uses the site as well. The last one we had was a priest from Plegia over twenty years ago.”

“So, they do what? Meditate beside a pool?” Severa asks.

The monk just smiles. “Maybe you’ll see. It is not an easy place to get to. You would have to climb down into a stone pit and be ready to face yourself.”

Severa rolls her eyes. “Sounds great.”

Lon’qu elbows her as the head monk travels farther up the cobbled path and gestures for them to follow. The path opens up into a forested area where a river and men in bright orange outfits can be seen in the brush beyond. Some of them are on the shore, chanting and cheering while one takes their shirt off.

Severa frowns. “What are they doing?”

Musashi studies the scene. “Training.”

Severa and Lon’qu watches as the monks throw their bare-chested fellow into the freezing river, and the man pops up after a second, screaming and beating his chest in defiance as he shivers in the water.

Severa glances over to the head monk. “They’re insane.”

Musashi shakes his head. “Swimming through the cold water builds mental resistance and discipline. By overcoming our self-imposed mental and physical limitations can we begin to grow.”

Lon’qu glances over at her.

Severa bares her teeth. “If you throw me in, I will stab you where you stand.”

The head monk crosses the path ahead of them, waving for them to follow.

The woods beside them lay covered in snow while a quiet rushing sounds around the bend. Severa glances at Lon’qu before passing a gnarled, ancient tree with branches like twisting limbs. Ahead of them stands a rushing waterfall, shivering monks crowded underneath it just outside the spray. There’s a lean monk with a shaved head at the top of the waterfall. He brings up a spear before twisting his torso and hurling at the boy at the bottom, who twists enough and snatches blindly into the spray before falling backwards. He lands on his bottom with the ends of the spear clattering on the stones beneath him, a wide crooked grin spreading on his face while the other monks rush him and slap his back with loud cheers.

Severa gapes. “What is that?”

The head monk waves briefly at his students before turning to her. “A confidence test designed to stretch physical, psychological, and emotional endurance. It also reveals whether the student trusts the teacher enough to listen to their instruction and follow on faith alone.”

Lon’qu leans forwards. “I’ve heard of those. They say you used to tests students by having them meditate in a cemeteries or immersing themselves in well water for seven days.”

The head monk’s eyes crinkles. “Or fight a tiger. No one does those ones anymore, though we occasionally challenge ourselves to dip our hands in boiling oil or catch a spear thrown down a waterfall.” He inclines his head to the whooping monks beside them.

Severa stares. “I take it back. You’re all insane.”

The head monk waves her off while moving ahead. Lon’qu studies the waterfall a bit more before striding ahead. Severa pulls her jacket tighter against her, muttering.

They wound around the garden path again before coming back under a stone archway into the other side of the courtyard. To the far right, nestled into the corner of the mountain is a strange, square tower with stone steps.

As they climb, Severa feels the chill tighten its grip on her skin, and she yanks her scarf over the lower half of her face. They emerge in a platform with stone battlements and a massive iron-cast bowl standing with orange fire dancing inside. Severa flinches at the flames and takes a step back.

Lon’qu glances at her. “Afraid?”

Severa yanks her scarf tighter across her face. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

He studies her with his head tilted. “Maybe one day, you’ll tell me.” 

The head monk clears his throat and gestures to the space around them. Four wooden posts rise above them at each corner of the square platform. Around them are bundles of red paper tags with gold lettering. “This is where we burn our emotional attachments to the material world. Many monks stay here their entire lives, and during their studies, sometimes, members of their family may pass away. To grieve, a monk will write the name of their loved ones onto a red tag and put it into the fire to cleanse themselves. Those who cannot let go leave their burdens on the post.” The head monk shakes his head. “You cannot gather greatness for your future if you drag your past behind you.”

“Some people have heavy pasts.” Severa clenches her fists. 

“It doesn’t matter if some have more to carry. It means they are destined for more greatness if they choose to be, but many decide not to. Why is that?” The head monk meets her eyes, and Severa looks away. 

Musashi continues. He speaks softly. “Everyone suffers. Not even Naga’s chosen nor her champions are free from it. In fact, they are the ones who often bear the most.”

Severa tries to scoff, but something catches in her throat. She crosses her arms and huffs, looking away. The monk concludes the tour and leads them back down the tower back to his office. Severa thanks him and abruptly leaves. She stops down the hallway when she realizes she still has the fur coat on. 

The voices are muffled as she approaches. Severa hears low murmurs behind the wooden door, and she pauses awkwardly with the coat over one arm. 

“...that girl Severa…”

She leans in, pressing her ear to the cold grain.

“...we have had many guests, and it is easy to recognize the signs. We had a troubled young man once from Plegia. He had a great talent for understanding the spiritual realm, but he held uncertainty from what was asked of him. It rend him in two for many days until he resolved the tatters in his faith.”

“What does that have to do with her?”

A long exhale. “You have seen many men who walk and talk and breathe among us but, inside, they are as dead as their dreams. Inside, something that Naga has given them has died, and they lose the conviction in their future and in their fate. They speak doubt into their lives and pull down others who try to climb. Do you know why that is?”

Severa pulls away from the door, staring. She turns on her heel and walks away down the hallway, leaving the coat on the floor.

The answer doesn’t matter to Severa anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I want you to know  
> one thing. 
> 
> You know how this is:  
> if I look  
> at the crystal moon, at the red branch  
> of the slow autumn at my window,  
> if I touch  
> near the fire  
> the impalpable ash  
> or the wrinkled body of the log,  
> everything carries me to you,  
> as if everything that exists,  
> aromas, light, metals,  
> were little boats  
> that sail  
> toward those isles of yours that wait for me. 
> 
> Well, now,  
> if little by little you stop loving me  
> I shall stop loving you little by little. 
> 
> If suddenly  
> you forget me  
> do not look for me,  
> for I shall already have forgotten you. 
> 
> If you think it long and mad,  
> the wind of banners  
> that passes through my life,  
> and you decide  
> to leave me at the shore  
> of the heart where I have roots,  
> remember  
> that on that day,  
> at that hour,  
> I shall lift my arms  
> and my roots will set off  
> to seek another land. 
> 
> But  
> if each day,  
> each hour,  
> you feel that you are destined for me  
> with implacable sweetness,  
> if each day a flower  
> climbs up to your lips to seek me,  
> ah my love, ah my own,  
> in me all that fire is repeated,  
> in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,  
> my love feeds on your love, beloved,  
> and as long as you live it will be in your arms  
> without leaving mine."
> 
> -Pablo Neruda


End file.
